Today is the last full day at sea for us, in around 24 hours we should be
\nmaking landfall and reach Les Sables D’Olonne and bring to a conclusion
\nthis epic jurney.<\/p>\n
We’ve been making very good progrees with strong following winds pushing
\nus for days but the adventure is not quite over yet. Last night as the
\nfront was passing through we were flying towards the finish line with our
\nmedium spinnaker in strong building winds, admittedly we were on the limit
\nbut it was such a joy to see the boat surfing at 15-20 knots that i wished
\nto take that memory home with me.<\/p>\n
All was fine, the front came through with gusts of nearly 40 knots that
\nwould send the boat driving through walls of spray. After the front the
\nwind started to ease and there seemed no further need to change down, just
\nthen the spinnaker came down straight in the water. It was a hell of a job
\nto retrieve the sail on board as it was acting as a sea anchor, we tried
\nto stop the boat as best as we could and then an inch at a time we managed
\nto drag the cloth into the cockpit. Miraculously the sail did not even get
\ndamaged, it had not been torn by the wind, instead, a stainless steel
\nshackle that holds the sail attached to the sock had broken, a rather
\nunlikely and unpredictable failure but that shackle has been twice around
\nthe world and I have to accept these things can happen. All in all, apart
\nfrom getting soaked and tired there were no consequences to the incident,
\nwe promptly hoisted the smaller spinnaker and kept going.<\/p>\n
As i write we are crossing the imaginary line between Ouessant and Cape
\nFinisterre that delimits the bay of Biscay. The route to and from these
\ntwo points is one of the busiest shipping routes in Europe leading into
\nthe traffic of the English Channel. We had been used to seeing the
\noccasional ship in the North Atlantic which is certainly the busiest of
\nthe seas we crossed, but here, suddenly the AIS anti collision system woke
\nup and is currently plotting 12 ships in range, all travelling along this
\nroute, pretty much like crossing a motorway.<\/p>\n
Further in the bay, where the sea bed rises sharply from thousands of
\nmeters to shallow waters we’ll have to watch for french fishing boats, a
\nreal threat, Hugo Boss was famously hit by one just outside Les Sables
\nD’Olonne, let’s hope they are on strike today!<\/p>\n
I’m sure a part of me will be sad when all of this will be over, but the
\nanticipation for the completion of this journey is enormous, my fiancee
\nElla is now travelling from London to come and meet me on the finish line
\nand it will be a really special feeling after 10 months of separation
\ninterrupted by brief visits at each stopover. Several family and friends
\nwill travel to meet me in Les Sables and I think as the days will pass it
\nwill all start to sink in, that we have sailed around the world.<\/p>\n
Certainly the return to land will have its share of challenges, hopefully Time to concentrate for the final stretch…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today is the last full day at sea for us, in around 24 hours we should be making landfall and reach Les Sables D’Olonne and bring to a conclusion this epic jurney. We’ve been making very good progrees with strong following winds pushing us for days but the adventure is not quite over yet. Last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-ocean-race"],"views":3049,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":332,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions\/332"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nan offer on the boat will materialise soon to enable me to deal with the
\ndebts i racked up and get by until i find a job. None of this is life
\nthreatening though, only a temporary hassle which i think pales in
\ncomparison to what we’re achieving. A massive thanks to those who have
\nsent fresh funds through www.marconannini.com\/help<\/a>, a webpage that was
\nsetup as a bit of a joke and that put me back in the game when I very
\nnearly retired from the race in New Zealand, these contributions have made
\na make or break difference to the project, thank you all!<\/p>\n