From: OmanTri
To: update
Subject: screaming south east
Date: 16/02/2009 04:58:08


We are screaming along heading South East bows pointing directly at the
southern tip of South America, now just 440nm away…We are sailing in a
building breeze that wiill give us our last push of the Pacific and to our
meeting with Cape Horn. Most of the last 24hours we’ve once again been
blessed with fantastic conditions, warm on deck, full main and gennaker, and
a chance to talk over the trip so far. Major milestones cause endless
reviews of progress todate and anticipated future progress, enevitably
ending up with the multimillion dollar question, if we make it all the way
back to Muscat ( and we’ve all be touching wood a fair bit today ) when is
it possible to arrive? Well the best we can do at the moment is set some
kind of impossible goal, and reach for it, knowing not much is within our
control! So our impossible dream is to arrive back during the day time of
the England Vs France 6 nations clash……Mathmatically possible, however
unlikely. Sorry for getting ahead of ourselves all the time – but it’s a
real reflection on what happens at these points on the trip, and we are
still not there yet.

At the current speed and true to form we’ll be rounding cape horn in the
dark. However the two different weather models can’t quite agree on exactly
what weather we’ll see in the next 24 hours so it’s hard to know if we’ll be
quite this quick ( and we are screaming along) I guess if I had to bet, it’d
be that we are going to get somewhere very close by dawn tuesday locally,
that might be a few miles before or a few miles afterwards – we’ll just have
to see, bur one model indicates our final push reaching gusts to 50 kts of
wind, whilst the other quite a bit less.

Right now on deck it’s chilly, 8 degrees, dark, and every 5 mins of so a
wave over the bow, and blasting into the guys on deck, with sea tempreture
down at 8.6 degrees where it’s be hovering for last 48 hours it’s the
southern ocean for sure. down below at the chart table writing this the
occassional pause for a rub of the hands before continuing typing. The
generator is a noisy heater, but it does raise cabin temperature nicely, and
if timed properly can make the transition between sailing gear and sleeping
bag very pleasureable.


Clothing is the other massive conversation piece – it’s a huge topic
generally, and you’d have thought that any chat about what to wear when we
have a very limited selection of clothes for our entire trip would be a
short chat – but it’s quite the reverse. When ever Hooch arrives on deck
( mood dictated by techniques used to wake him up) he announces what
clothing combination he has on. “White, Blue, Grey,Warm Grey on the top,
Warm White Blue Warm Grey on the bottom” is something like how it goes
followed by ” i’m giving the warm gloves ago now, see if i can keep them on
the whole watch, no need to take ’em off for sail changes” after gloves,
it’s head gear, ” Buff,Balaclava,and grey ” of course we onow what all
these colour codings are, and have a similar response to him ” White, Blue,
Warm Blue” is a typical response…..it’s like a ritual greeting.

I’ll leave todays update like a child writing on Christmas eve, not wishing
the next day to arrive too soon for fear of it being over too quickly, but
all the same aching for it to arrive. I hadn’t realised just how much I was
looking forward to arriving at the Horn, but you can probably tell, we all
are, very much.