Sailing News

  A nasty gale is brewing south of us, the worst of it is headed straight for Cape Horn just at the same time we were due to round the infamous cape. After much debate we decided it was simply too risky for us to carry on heading for such a dangerous randez-vous and have… Read more

  Our moment of glory as leaders of the Global Ocean Race was short-lived, as predicted the reaching conditions favoured the newer more powerful Cessna who simply pulled away averaging 1-2 knots faster despite our every effort to bear away and sail as fast as possible. Now finally the wind has turned round and we… Read more

  Finally our dive to penguin latitudes paid its dividends and today we jumped in the lead of the third leg of the Global Ocean Race with a lead of 30 miles over Cessna Citation who had chosen a more northerly option. We are still on full time radar watch for icebergs, the risk of… Read more

  In a few miles we’ll touch the latitude of 60 degrees south, it sounds quite frightening but my cure is to remember that when I sailed the Shetland Round Britain and Ireland in 2010 we were in higher latitudes in the northern hemisphere, I guess what makes here so overwhelming is the sense of… Read more

Yesterday a brief email from Cessna some 50 miles to our port (to the north of us) brought home the reality of our current position on the planet. They had just spotted two icebergs, Antarctica is just over 1000 miles to the south of us and although we are out of dense iceberg territory a… Read more

Who would have imagined that in the third and most symbolic of legs, heading for Cape Horn, we would be battling for the lead of the Global Ocean Race. The storms of the early part of this leg seem now a distant memory, two boats retired in huge seas and 50 knots winds. Today in… Read more

After nearly two weeks of hard core sailing, the best part of which spent beating upwind in very tough conditions, including an early force 9 storm that prompted two boats to retire, we are finally through the scoring gate taking 2nd place. This virtual line on the chart served two purposes, first to provide an… Read more

If this were a movie the last two days would have made for some nice drama on the high seas, imagine the context, a fleet of racing boats headed for Cape Horn, a South Pacific gale battering the fleet, huge waves crashing against the boat through the night, the constant noise of haliards hitting the… Read more

After what seemed like an eternal time spent beating upwind the last 48 hours have finally given us some following winds and faster sailing conditions. This came as a huge relief although sailing downwind at high speeds presents its own challenges too./p> Last night unfortunately we trashed our biggest spinnaker in an accident caused by… Read more