Day 6

We have crossed the Greenwich Meridian! For those who are as useless as I am at geography, it is the line of zero longitude that runs through Greenwich in London on which GMT time zone is based. We had our own countdown, but didn’t have much enthusiasm from those who were cuddled up in their bunks exhausted after last night’s sailing. Rick and I were up by default, but it was definitely worth seeing the latitude on the GPS reading strike 00:00:00 at 06h42 this morning (SA time).

Brad and I were expressing two nights ago, how it was time to go west, and hopefully find these elusive trade winds that everybody had spoken about, but we were yet to experience. Well, I think we can safely say we have arrived and Phase 2 of the race is now in full swing.

C2R can be broken up into three phases:

Phase 1: leaving of Cape Town into the trade winds

Phase 2: sailing through the trade winds

Phase 3: the navigation into Rio.

Phase 1 should be behind us now, with the last 24 hours being your typical trade wind conditions. While last night was chilly at times, and had blotches of light rain, one could get away just wearing your foul weather pants and safety harness.

In Phase 1, a lot of the big cards were played. Our tactic of choosing to sail wide around the high (and thus following a very northerly bearing for the first few days) has worked out quite well for us, with many of the others that chose to steer closer to the high finding themselves in light winds.

Phase 2 will see us having to navigate around another high pressure that will probably build later this weekend. And Phase 3, the home stretch, is when it all gets really exciting as we all try plot around what is known as the "3-day parking lot", an area around Rio that can have you sitting in sight of Rio, but with no wind for a full three days. A painful experience which we would at all costs like to avoid.

The breeze has managed to cool what I think otherwise would be a scorcher of days. We have managed to smother ourselves in some SP130 factor sun cream that the boys brought back from Aus every morning. Whether it is 130SP or not is debatable, but if it works it works.

We woke up this morning to find another flying fish on the boat. I have

never seen Ry and Noo spring out of bed so quickly, with me screaming like a girl having nearly stepped on it. Mad excitement. The same level of excitement was seen from Brennan yesterday, as we passed a big tanker to starboard. The first life we have seen in five days.

Thank you all so much for the feedback on "going back west". It seems to have been a fight out between Boney M and Jimmy Cliff. Thanks though to Chantelle, who through her emailing through of the lyrics had us moving from a sing a word - skip 3 words, to now being able to bust out from start to end in full chorus. :)

The culinary challenge continues with Michaela Mae - our resident watch- master and CPFO (chief pancake frying officer) - in charge of tonight's meal. All the delicious fresh Cape fruit, compliments of the Miles family, has now being devoured and we are left eating dried and tin fruit. Not nearly as yummy. Mrs Crosland's divine dishes are also a thing of the past. I have never seen boys wolf down bolognaise like they did on the night of day three. The pressure on the rest of us to now make the remaining non-perishable food taste half as good is immense.

The responses from everyone have been absolutely fantastic! We have no access to internet, so we cannot respond to any of your blog comments or messages. However, thanks to our friend The Stig (who you will all be buying drinks for when we have a homecoming celebration), there is not one comment or message that we don't see. I have it on good authority that our following ranges from the South Coast (yes Sue we got your mail), NZ, Florida, other Florida, Hartswater (some god-forsaken town in the Northern Cape) and the outer Hebrides. Baie Mooi!

We hope that you all have a stunning weekend. To those good-looking athletes doing 70.3 - Enjoy! I'm expecting feedback emails from all of you on Monday stating some amazing results so no disappointing please!

As I write this, the kamikaze pilots (Bren and Bradley) are currently on the helm, and we are flying like a bat out of hell. The trade winds have obviously stepped up the pace a little. Hold thumbs that it stays!