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Cheeki Rafiki - Day 16



Last night Ivan and I came on  watch at 0200 to experience the best rain shower yet, in seconds we were dripping in fresh water and the torrential downpour lasted for about 20 minutes, as always however we did not know how long it would last and dared not lather up with shower gel for fear that the rain might stop any second, leaving us covered in soap but with no way to rinse off. Winds throughout the night were shifty resulting in spinnaker up, spinnaker down, spinnaker up, gybe, gybe, gybe, spinnaker down, pole out headsail, gybe, and so on. On that point the blue ocean spinnaker that was resurrected by the sweat shop a few days ago came back out to play yesterday. We hoisted it carefully and all watched with bated breath as it first filled with wind. Everyone thought's were as to whether the 30 hrs of repair work was going to hold up. While the repair was not pretty and reminded us of the mouth of a Halloween pumpkin in appearance it did the job and our three Russian seamstresses were again congratulated on their great work. We flew this kite for most of yesterday changing down to the light wind kite late in the day as the wind dropped.
 
On watch today at 1000, the villains however gave us a lie in. On deck shortly after 1000, very hot, 4 knots wind, 1.5 knots of boat speed and the discussion of swimming is taking place. As much as I would love to dive into the cool Atlantic waters I am very aware that 1.5 knots is quite fast for a swimmer to keep up and if we receive a gust, we would leave him behind. Yacht racing cap I decided that swimming is not an option at this point, maybe later if we really do park up with absolutely no wind. A couple of hours later and we are crawling slowly toward Sty Lucia. Boat speed is about 2 knots if we concentrate and while it is frustrating the distance to the finish is slowly reducing.
 
For the last 4 days we have been followed day and night by  "Lone Star," an Amel 54. No matter how hard we tried we could not pull more than 8 miles ahead of them and no doubt how ever hard they tried they could not close the gap to more than 5 miles.This morning she finally decided enough was enough and turned her engine on. The plotter/AIS recorded her doing a steady 8.5 knots as she finally overtook us under power. On the opposite horizon "Ula" a Privilege 58 did the same thing and overtook us doing 8 knots. Behind us "Buzios VII" the Jeanneau 49 performance, is catching up at 7 knots under power.
 
When we first saw other yachts motoring, we were only doing 0.9 knots and it was a bit depressing to see these large cruising yachts turn on their engine and blast of to St Lucia, the cold beer, the rum punch, the proper showers and the party. Over the last three hours however under the careful helming of John and now Ksenia we have maintained a boat speed of over two knots and sometimes three. We listened into to several cruising yachts discussing at what point they should motor. One of them maintained that as soon as his boat was sailing at less than 5.6 knots it paid to take the motoring penalty, put the engine on and go for 10 knots under power. I found it  very odd to listen to a yachtsmen who had opted to cruise and not to race to tell us all that he had to turn on his engine to maintain a position of 5th in the cruising fleet.Those yachts opting to use engine may get there before us but we are happy in the knowledge that we are for the moment at least still sailing and still in our race.
 
So how is the race going? Well we have remained in 4th place in division and 1st 40.7 for several days now. We are steadily closing the gap with Milanto (the yacht in third place), in fact we have overtaken them on the water but they still have us on rating. Meanwhile there is cluster of friendly rivals, "Lancelot", "Lancelot 2","Coyote" and "Oxygene" not far behind. I guess they are like us, in a patch of very light airs. Any one (or even all) of them could still catch us if they get the wind first. "Scarlet Oyster" has finished and "Optimax" is well ahead, the others are I think (and hope) are a safe enough distance behind that we need not worry about them for the moment.
 
With 200 miles to go and very little wind we are tantalisingly close, I am hoping some wind fills in this afternoon  or early evening for a couple of hours and helps us along the way a bit. The biggest worry is that the region is forecast for wind now and that if we don't have it the others might! In the mean time we will enjoy the sun!
 
With little else to do but sleep it may be one of the crew follows up with another blog later today.
 
Doug Innes
Skipper (Cheeki Rafiki / Stormforce Coaching)
 
 



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