From: OmanTri
Date: 25/03/2009 00:16:49
To: update
Subject: Wednesday 25/3


Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:16:04 -0000

My Last Update.

I am writing this a little early, we are in the process of rotating around
the headland Ras al Hadd and have 98nm to finish. our current heading is
directly for the N end of the finish line.!

We have had a good last 24hours, good winds, good sea conditions, made land
fall off the beautiful island of Masirah, ,much to Mohsin’s delight, even
though he wasn’t the first to spot it! Remember that’s the first land since
South America. We have been full main and gennaker all day, and now having
come onto the breeze a bit more we have solent and full mainsail – flying
along 20 kts at times.. ships either side of us – all slower than us! Great
sailing. We do expect the wind to drop around sun rise in 2 hours time, and
suddenly our pace to the finish will be slower, though we expect to get a
good sea breeze developing that will help with speed over the final few
hours.

An hour a go we were under attack again – this time by a foot long bonnito
that decided to hitch a ride, i am sure it must have damaged it’s self on
landing, it sure landed with a massive clatter, but we put him back, and if
nothing else he’ll be someone’s lunch – we didn’t feel the need to keep him
for lunch our selves – being this close to the finish means we can wait for
our fresh food ( though hard to believe getting anything quite that fresh
! )

with less than 100nm to go it’s weird to think we have come all this way…
it does seem a while since the start, and so much has happened, we have been
away a long time, but we’ve taken each day as it comes, and 10,000nm to go
became 5,000, became 1000, became 500, up to now. We are excited to be
finishing. Hard to believe our journey – i’ll need to sit down and re-read
the 75 update emails to relive some of what happened! It’s also been great
to be on the other side of the fence – I have always been one of the ones in
the office, or working on the boat before departure, and so I know that side
rather well, being on this side has give me a great feel for the whole thing
now. I know we’ve all learned loads in doing this project – what is
important for OmanSail is that we capture as much of this experience as
possible to ensure furture projects just get better and better. It’s a long
term project and learning the lessons at each stage will make progress
faster and easier.

I have a million thanks to write, but probably want to spend a bit of time
putting them together,so you’ll excuse this quick thanks – just to say to
everyone who’s been involved, everyone who’s emailed encouragement, everyone
who’s read the website, everyone who’s supported us , a huge thank you, we
had a lot of fun, and hope you have enjoyed our journey, we look forward
to sharing much more of it as we speak to you face to face, and of course
through the documentary, the makers of which have around 40 hours woth of
video to gather into some kind of order – when you see it – finally you’ll
see some of the things we have seen – it’s been fantastic. It was alway my
plan to make the update as one from the boat, and try to report on the
feeling onboard rather than my personal feelings, some times that
worked -other times it’s impossible not to write from a personal point of
view, so for any overtly personal moments I apologise.

looking forward to seeing everyone very soon