The Sundance Marine Melbourne to Osaka Cup crew are performing extremely well out on the water and as well most of them are following up with our request to keep us all informed as often as possible as well. Daily, messages are arriving either via the daily position schedules, through direct emails to our news desk, or on individual competitors Facebook pages. It’s impossible to reproduce them all here on the website but as we’ve done before, here are a few of the more substantial pieces of correspondence that we’ve posted on Facebook.
On Sunday April 1st we received our first mail from Annette on Red jacket.
I cannot believe that we have been out in the ocean for 6 days now. Our last sighting of land was Hogan Is off Wilsons Prom on Tuesday morning. Since then we have mostly been on starboard tack out in the vast ocean about 200 nm off Australia. We have managed to take advantage of a north setting current and been propelled north even when there has been fickle wind. We have just spent 24 hours in sight of Runaway and we know others are close by with occasional chatter and camaraderie heard over the VHF. Life has become a simple routine of watch keeping, sleeping, eating, navigating and sail trimming. I have become preoccupied with garbology as I try to squeeze our rubbish inside of each piece by piece carefully washing each bit of waste so that it does not stink. I cannot help but think how excessive all of this packaging and waste is. As for washing of ourselves and clothing….well it is amazing what some baby wipes, deodorant, a hair and tooth brush can do. Trying to mainta
in some decorum on Red. Trying to make one T shirt and shorts last a week and of course there is a rule to change nickers every second day! There is not a drop of fresh water to spare. So there you have it. Life aboard Red. – Annette
Monday April 2nd proved to be a busy day for mail as well. Firstly Rod from Maverick.
Overnight from Rod and Tyson on Maverick – plus a shot from start day.
01/04/2018 – A day for the good guys today. Tyson suggested to try and load via the satphone from out tablet. WhoopDdo. All works great albeit a little slower than Id like. Because of that we must modify our strategy for weather download which is all good. I think having done the prep beforehand its all good.
I note in the weather Cyclone Josie and Typhoon Jelawat in our paths. Josie looks to be going to annoy the Kiwis and Jelawat is a long way off but having said that, it is very early for a typhoon. We now get daily emails from the race director with everyones position which is awesome.
The good thing about being the smallest boat in our mid-fleet is that you can use the other boats as mobile forward weather stations. Last night was glamour as far as reasonable speeds and flattish seas. We both got a good sleep and were both beginning to settle into life at sea. Tysons cooking is amazing and were getting constant variety. I ate the last of the fresh pears today. Highlights the bean bag. Gotta love the bean bag.
Late afternoon on Monday, a hello from Jo on Morning Star after a number of days.
Things have been going pretty well for us here on Morning Star, although we are certainly finding these latitudes difficult.
In the last 24 hours we have been alternating between 10 knots and 30 knots of breeze right on the nose as the big squalls come through. They are easy enough to manage during the day, but picking the big clouds at night is sometimes a challenge, and we have got caught out a few times. I have lost count of how many times we have put reefs in and taken them out today! With our furling head sail we are also struggling for height in these conditions, and making relatively slow progress through the Solomon Sea.
Knowing the rest of the fleet are now hunting us down makes this particularly frustrating, but we are trying to stay positive and focus on sailing in the conditions we have. Cheers, Jo
And our first Email in from John on Utopia 2001 was welcome. That’s a shot of the boat at the top of the page, taken just before the main start last week.
Hard to believe we’re a week into the race and Steve still hasn’t caught a fish. He can’t use the excuse that we are travelling to fast either! It’s amazing how the situations change so quickly in yacht racing. We had a satisfactory start considering the weather and we were happy with our position at the first mark but that soon changed as our lovely reaching yacht faltered big time in the short tacking out through the infamous, (rightly earned status) Port Phillip Rip.
Steve’s back was a bit tender in the lead up because of various heavy lifting chores involved with our preparations, so he has been happy with the light conditions that have followed.
We took our first night at sea pretty easy for reasons just mentioned. We were in company of several of our competitors for most of the course to Wilson’s Prom and chose to stick to the structured separation zones for our exit of Bass Strait, out first mistake! We ended up drifting for 24 hrs + at 2.5 kts in an ESE direction. We figured we had given the fleet a good enough start so when we finally got some favourable breeze, it was encouraging to say the least to pull the fleet back somewhat.
Midday Saturday 31st we calculated the course to our Solomon Is course option had a distance of 1500 nm course 10 deg, our Brittany Channel option distance was 1400 nm course 350 deg, so we set off on course 360 deg.
Seemed a pretty fair bet and it seemed to us that we were bringing up the Southeast trade winds, all looked pretty rosy for about 12 hours. Wrong again, frustrated by our difficulties getting a synoptic chart downloaded we decided for several reasons to go with the flow and close the East Coast and do battle with the current and traffic.
We feel we have been a bit lucky again actually with the developing patterns of these lows that have been roaming the race course for several weeks now. It seems Joh & Pete, along with The Edge team have snuck through, but it may not be so good for the rest of us, so we have received the notice from the committee graciously!
Thinking Runaway Bay Marina is looking the most practical for us. Still a couple of days away, so no pressure here. Awaiting further instructions.
Cheers from ‘The Ute’