Tom Dangles from the Pole

After winning the mid-Atlantic quiz at the halfway party on Thursday, Tom was given the unique oppotunity to go up the pole to admire the view and take a photo of us all. And so, around Friday lunchtime he was stood on the foredeck, attached to a harness and winched up the down-haul until he was suspended somewhere off the side of the boat, around 20ft above the water as we sped along at 8kts. Somehow he even remembered to take the photo and managed not to look too terrified! The photos we took from the boat are pretty good as well.

Last night was one of the busier nights as we had to jibe at around 11 o'clock at night. We took this opportunity to bring forward a planned lowering of the spinnaker from lunchtime today to the middle of the night. And so the early hours were spent repacking and wooling the spinaker before putting it back up again a few hours later. Although a few of us lost some sleep during this time, I think we are mostly agreed that doing this at night was probably preferable to doing it in the middle of the day, especially as today is one of the hottest yet.

However all of this was almost done in vain as we were hit by a squall in the early hours which brought torrential rain and fairly strong winds, but fortunately this passed fairly quickly before it was neccessary to bring the spinaker down again.

It was a bad night for Watch 1, who lost sleep in the middle of the night and then got rain on in the early hours.

Overall it has been an interesting night, however the sun is now up and it is a beautiful day.

Only three more days to Barbados!

Giles