Leg 6 Race 2.. A bunny hop to Japan.

Happy Easter! About this time every year at home we would come together in the garden, sprogs and orchestrator, accompanied by a photographer/cheerleader, and our fearless companions of course, for an Easter egg hunt; complete with cryptic clues, this was a momentous occasion, a true test of speed, body and mind. I will attempt to do the same on the boat, we will see if anyone picks up on it…

After the fog slowly began to lift, we entered into the journey of a thousand sail changes to the bottom of Japan. For some reason, the wind just couldn’t make up its mind for the last 550 miles. Along a straight course of 225 degrees we went from close hauled to deep downwind in no time at all, calling full attention to shifts and making sure that that we were the first to catch on, and that the other boats, still very close by, would take a second longer than us to unbewilder themselves. Our first morning after the fog began slow, the wind dropped to nothing, so we flew our biggest lightest sail, beautiful Code 1, until it was no longer possible, then hoisted it’s baby sister, the Windseeker, to let her have some stardom, before it built. We knew it would build, but it really built. Little sister got too tired of playing and our trusty Yankee 2 shot to the scene, ready to fight with the bullish wind ahead of us. Though the sea state was initially flat, the wind was a feisty force. It built to the point that we discovered we had a third reef; I think in our whole time sailing this race, we have used reef three on maybe two occasions (reef three is the smallest that we can make the mainsail without dropping it completely. The next step would be a storm trisail, but I don’t actually know if we have one…). Because of the high winds, we began to be overpowered by the Yankee 2 at the front which would pull us up into the wind without warning, without the power in the centre of the boat, but any more sail and we would have our winches in the water, it just became a dog of a fight to keep the boat down on the wind, rotating every half hour to keep arms and shoulders fresh.

Gradually, over the next 6 hours, the wind shifted from close haul, to beam reach, to downwind, and once the wind had backed off to be more consistently below thirty knots, and the sea state settled from the confused mess the changing wind had churned it into, we decided it was time for the Code 1 to reappear. In the set up for this hoist we discovered that Chickpea’s fingers are somewhat explosive as they blew up our halyard shackle at first touch, following this near disaster, we quickly rerouted the spare halyard to quickly hoist and make gain on the others. Once the remainders of the disjointed sea had settled, and the fight between waves shifted to a flow, we were gliding, smooth turns down each wave as they built and fell behind us, perfect, for about two hours, then the wind disappeared again. Just in time for the other watch.

This disappearance actually ended up to be fortuitous for me, as my curse continues to prove itself, or maybe it was Nemo’s praying to the green monster gods, as we received a very flat boat for most of our mother watch. We breezed through breakfast, lunch was lovely, then it picked up again, obviously, up, down, up, down, this wind is seriously like spaniel in a poppy field; mad! then, quiet. Then, ears! quiet. We had hit the bit where the dog finds the path and is running back to its owner. We steadily maintained a nice heel through the six hours of curry prep, chopping alone took an hour and a half. Every now and again you could pop your head up and check the outside situ; they were gaining on us, they were all gaining on us. Soon we had been surrounded, our fourth position was threatened now by the entire fleet converging on the mark at the base of Japan. Fighting hard against DC, our guys trimmed to perfection as we came to the mark, careful not to come off the wind too much so that we’d miss the mark, whilst keeping the speed to fight off the incoming yanks. As soon as we’d rounded it, and I left for bed, the stress of racing dissipated again with the wind. The spaniel had ran out of puff. I slept for twelve hours. 

When I woke up from my long slumber, the story was much the same. I came up to the deck to a new parade of sail. It seemed as though the first race down to Japan had been finished and we were reconvening for our final well wishes before the big crossing. Ha ha long bay and PSPSPSPSPS had missed the memo and were pushing further ahead; the other Chinese boat had tried to join them but hadn’t got very far. We decided to head for the easterly current slightly more south between mainland Japan and an island, accompanied by Perseverance (who had been 23miles behind and very glad about the wind hole, whilst they weren’t in it), the others hugged the mainland to use the tides for propulsion, both fair options. We thought this was farewell for now, but just a couple hours later and we were all getting in each others way again. The wind slowly span around, sometimes we would spin with it, other times we would fly our kite at a close haul; in one attempt to granny gybe the code 1 we got it caught on the spreaders, no good, instead of gybing we dropped the kite to the deck and rehoisted on the other side; no wind, no problems.

I think over the past three days we have had around a dozen sail changes. It got to the point where we just left them all on deck (or all hanked on. shhhh) because they’d be up again so soon. We did, however, cover the same stretch of water over twice as fast as the previous edition of the race, which took 6 days to reach the bottom of Japan. Good fun.

Happy Easter!

Will x