Leg 5 Race 1.. Questionable kiting and terribly terrific tactics

30 January 2024

The day started with our first 2am-8am watch, something untested, and something that worried Rick for fear of crew sleeping on watch. We were so on it. It was an awesome watch, proper racing against the fleet close around us. We trimmed constantly eking every 0.1 of a knot out of the sails, and rotated the helms at half hour intervals to keep everyone fresh and remove any stagnancy. We gained on the leaders by a mile and reduced our gap from Dare To lead to 0.2 of a mile. This led to an epic game of cat and mouse with Dare to Lead, of which there was no real winner. We chased for hours weaving in and out and then letting them weave up and down ahead of us, obviously rattled by our presence it was fun watching them scamper. While we were messing about, PSP managed to catch up from behind, but we had fun doing it so we didn’t care.

We then entered into the most strange kite run yet. Ha Long Bay appeared out of nowhere from behind brandishing their Code 2 and cementing our deliberation on whether to hoist or not. PSP followed suit next to us with their Code 1 and we quickly ran the sheets and prepped the 2 for liftoff. Our first hoist as a new crew and it went very smoothly. Wallace, Grommet, and I sweat the beast right to the top and we proceeded into a swift Yankee drop, all shortly followed by some rough expletives emitting from myself as I realised the lazy sheet had ended up on the wrong side of the tack, a result of attaching the halyard inside the sheet pre-hoist. We quickly whipped it around the tack and solved the problem, hoisted the anti wrap, and proceeded to sail the kite way to high at around 60 degrees apparent wind angle. Faster though? We did show that we can work quickly and efficiently as a new watch.

It got so much better. Sailing at high angle of 70 degrees apparent we were keeping up with the leading group, 2 miles ahead, Dare to Lead were still with us, just behind now, but keeping up isn’t going to win anything. Under the cover of darkness, Rick came up with a new plan, hoist our staysail alongside its giant cousin and see what happens. We quickly made space on the winches and went for it. It felt wrong but we had sneaked an extra 0.4 of a knot out of the dragon, small but it gave us the edge. The only problem with this was that we could no longer see the kite from the helm, for two hours I helmed relying solely on the trimming skills of Urgent who stood on the low side, calling out when a save was necessary. We were flying. By the end of the watch we had caught up with both Punta and UNICEF and were pressing on past them, still unaware of our sneaktics. We went to bed happy and proud.

The other watch had done their part well. When we woke up we were both past UNICEF and Punta, and were just a mile behind Zhuhai. Back in the game we sailed with a new passion, like a hermit crab hunting for a larger shell we were not content with staying put. Surfing every small wave we could and trimming the kite from the bow we fought hard over the next two hours and eventually passed them. It was at this point we realised we had come into second place! In twenty-four hours we had come from 9th to 2nd gaining around 8 miles to the leading group. Hard work pays off. Our next mission: Perseverance. They had just popped back onto AIS, we had gained four miles on them since the previous report. 10 miles left to the Doldrums corridor mark.

Will x