1 Jan 2025

Happy New Year to all our followers.

The Race Committee presented each boat with a NYE Bucket something we introduced in the last edition and was well received. This bucket contained both sweet (biscuits and chocolate) and savoury (biltong, olives, Melrose cheese wedges, salty crack biscuits} treats, coffee, a magnetic chess game, some fairy lights. The highlight seems to be the Ultramel custard.

Mwera

All is well and had a lover New Year’s dance with the new Spinnaker. Thank you for the NYE bucket – half has already been annihilated.

One Eighty Magnus

Happy New Year to you guys and thank you for the New Year’s snack box. Much appreciated. All is well on board Magnus, enjoying the adventure so far. Fair winds to one and all. Magnus greetings. 👌🏻💯👻⛵️

Flica

Happy New Year!

Magic Dragon

Happy New Year everyone! The New Year arrived amidst glorious trade winds and stunning stars. The children were extremely excited to open the bucket – it was like Christmas had come again! Vera has become addicted to the custard drinks, Dorothy to the shortbread and (don’t tell the kids) I’ve become rather partial to the crackers and the gouda cheese on night watch! 4 games of Monopoly Bid and 3 of chess so far today.

It’s a fairly grey day out here with a bit of a chill in the air. We had a few larger swells yesterday evening but it’s calmed down since then. Wind is anywhere between 12 and 24 knots true from the south. Happily it makes for easy sailing with our white sails which we can run in without needing any reefs.

TinTin

Happy New Year from Tintin!

Lots to report from the past 24 hours!

Firstly: yesterday’s oil rig was the Deepsea Mira which was actually at work, drilling, in 3 000m of water, and was not under tow, as we had originally thought! Their guard vessel called us when we passed within a mile of them to warn us off! That drill rig certainly put my Makita drill in its place!

Beautiful sunshine in the afternoon so I got the sextant out and took a sun sight, which seemed to indicate that the GPS has an error of 4 miles.

Excellent steak for dinner. By 21:00 we were sailing in water over 4 000m deep.

Saw the New Year in with a celebratory cup of coffee.

In the morning we found a pair of squid on deck.

Still quite a bit of shipping around. The most impressive this morning was the CMA CGM Jean Mermoz. At 399m long she is one of the biggest container ships in the world, probably rated at over 20 000 TEU.

Day’s run was 212.6 miles, so not too bad, and for the last hour we have averaged 9.6 knots.

Rather surprisingly a Flyingfish landed in the cockpit while we were eating lunch. (They normally only land on deck at night). Also surprisingly it appeared to be a Bandwing Flyingfish, which are not particularly common around here. I think I have only ever seen them north of the Equator. Perhaps his navigation was a bit off? The most common Flyingfish around here is the Cosmopolitan Flyingfish, but curiously we haven’t yet seen one of them on this trip!

At lunch time we opened the New Year gift pack from the race committee. Very gratefully received. Thank you. Regards Nick


Umoya

Finally in the trades and surfing up to 16kn. This is the blue water sailing we’ve been waiting for. Last night, as if by Poseidon’s hand, our spinnaker popped just a couple of minutes after midnight to take us in to the NY! Thanks for the delicious treats from RCYC, and Dani and Pete!

Atalanta

Happy New Year

Fryd

Happy New Year to all!

Scroll to Top