News from the fleet
Day 11
Snippets of news for our followers
Vineta
Lots more gybing over the last 24 hours…once again.
A friend of mine once told me that sailing downwind is all about the Angels.
She told me that ‘sometimes you have good Angels and sometimes you have bad Angels. Always sail with the good Angels.’
It took me a while to figure out that with her foreign accent she was actually talking about angles, but anyway, it still sounded like sound advice.
The early hours of the morning also brought our first rain squalls of the race. A fair amount of rain, but light and shifty breeze for a few hours.
We also had a very large Flyingfish come aboard during the night. With beautifully patterned wings it turned out to be an appropriately named Atlantic Flyingfish (Cheilopogon furcatus).
Logbook of Audaz
We started the Cape2Rio with a few challenges right off the line, but once we managed to stabilize the issues, Audaz found her rhythm again and we recovered several positions. Now we’re on Day 10 of the race, with about eight days still ahead of us.
The crew’s morale is high — fun, positive, and truly the best team I could have chosen for this crossing. It’s the first time all of us are sailing together on this boat, so some manoeuvres require extra planning and coordination. Audaz is a big, heavy vessel, and at times we wish we had a few more hands, but the team is doing an excellent job.
Food and water are being well managed, and there’s plenty of good stuff on board. Whenever conditions allow, we celebrate the end of the afternoon with a small happy hour: cheeses, salami, olives, crackers, pâtés — and every now and then, a bit of wine to toast the day.
We had another issue with the spinnaker halyard. A block exploded and jammed the halyard at the masthead. We had to send someone up and swap halyards with the spinnaker flying. It was tense, but everything went well in the end.
Right now, we’re steering 300°, climbing a bit more as we search for better wind. Life on board is running smoothly: everyone helps with cooking — breakfast, lunch, and dinner — and the boat stays clean and organized. Well… except when we need to dig out a line buried under everything, and then chaos briefly takes over.
That’s it for now. I sign off thanking everyone who’s been following our journey and all the other participants of this incredible adventure.
African Skimmer
Last night was some of the best sailing conditions we have had in this trip – flat seas and good SE breeze carrying us over to Rio. Swell and wind came up again this morning and we have been battling with a big following sea coming in from the starboard quarter. So far we have managed to hold our bag up but may have to switch to a jib soon unless conditions improve.
