Sailing News
All the latest news from the world of sailing and stories from experienced sailors.
In the unlikely setting of a sunny Southern Ocean day, flying the biggest spinnaker under a blue sky, we dream of home, of friends, family and loved ones (and beer and steak). It’s friday and you’ll be heading home to your families soon so we thought we’d send you our best wishes for… Read more
Entering the Pacific
Yesteday we passed Cape Leeuwin, about 500 miles to our north and have now, geographically speaking, entered the Pacific Ocean… we have just under 2500 miles left to sail in this second leg of the Global Ocean Race and after all the nasty weather we had to endure for over a week today we… Read more
Wet and Wild
There we go, did i mention anytime over the past few days that this freaking place is a bit windy? We are running under triple reefed mainsail and staysail and earlier we got flattened on the side like a dinghy in a gust that read 57.8 knots on the one surviving wind instrument… This… Read more
War of attrition: Southern Ocean damage
I may sound boring if i reiterate that we’re still in 35-40 knots of wind, we have not seen anything less than 25 and anything up to 55 for the past week and inevitably we’ve suffered some level of damage. Australia is now only 750 miles above our heads but the finish line still… Read more
Riding the Southern Ocean horses: 52.7 knots top wind gust
Even the novelty of riding the back of a Southern Ocean low wears out after a while, it’s amazing what you get used to, we’ve been below, hatch closed, for the past two days pretty much eating and sleeping and riding this mad highway averaging around 12 knots but with surfs well above 20… Read more
Giant waves crashing over the boat after mad surfs
The low that two days ago gave us a kicking upwind has moved to the SE and now we are running in the strong following winds behind the cold front. All looks ideal on paper and i’m sure it must look exciting to see us on the tracker dashing at twice the speed compared to… Read more
Marco and Hugo survive the storm without damage
Storm is over, back to normality. After a couple of nasty and uncomfortable sailing days we just hoisted the small spinnaker and are finally heading east at decent speeds. The computer has recalculated the expected date of arrival in wellington and instead of some crazy date six months in the future we… Read more
Financial Crisis Heading South
Getting away from the worst of the stormy low A few hours ago we tacked south follwing Phesheya’s example to distance ourselves from the worst of the winds of the low pressure north west of us. By the time we tacked the wind was already blowing a full force 7 gusting 8 yet according to… Read more
Wet, cold, unpleasant bashing
So, the front came through, the wind went around from Northerly to Southerly in a very short space, within an hour we were reaching in 30-35 knots of wind in a very very confused sea state, absolutely horrible, boat thrown left to right, surfing, then bashing into a wave, then knocked sideways, waves of frozen… Read more
Happy days
The cold front is about to reach us, behind us i can see broken clouds and some blue sky here and there, it rained earlier and the wind has kept on backing. However as we are sailing relatively fast in the same direction as the front it is taking forever for it to overtake… Read more
