It’s the journey not the destination
It’s all over, after a final exhilarating sleigh ride over the last 48hrs of the race we crossed the finish line at 7.00 am Dec 4th,. The final 24 hour run was our best of the race at 272 miles .We finished third across the line, the two boats in front of us were a Volvo 60 , TheBig One and Bagheer a, Wally 80 which, remarkably, was on its first “shake down” cruise having just been delivered to its owner the week before the race started.
The South paid in the last few days and we watched our lead slowly but surely eaten up, and at the finish line there was only two hours between the first three boats after 11 days of racing.
A “classic” transat , the most we saw on the dial was 28 knots of true ,and we had the jib up for only about two hours in the whole race.
Here’s a selection of stats from the race:
We sailed 2991 miles , which took 286 hours and 2860 man hours . We averaged 9.4 knots of boatspeed.
We consumed
1 A3 Spinnaker
1 1ft length of spinnaker pole track
2 spinnaker braces
3 bottles of brown sauce
18 large packs of crisps
33 bags of chocolate
45 litres of milk
450 cans of pop
300l of drinking water
2Kg of coffee
3 jars of peanut butter
2640lites of tap water
And we had 11 days of uninterrupted sunshine, a beautiful boat, lots of laughs, great food and the peace and tranquillity of a beautiful ocean.
Why would anyone ever want to fly to the Caribbean? This is the way to get there, make your journey the most important part of your cruising plans not the destination. Enjoy the rest and relaxation that accompany a life which runs to a different rhythm. An ocean passage reduces life down to its simplest: night, day, food, water, sleep, wind speed, wind direction and the next sched rule your life and life becomes the richer for it.
Get out there and do it.
Signing off
TH & Team Stay Calm