Send-off party and progress to date

Saturday was the official send-off celebration.  Almost 60 yachts from Royal Cape picked up their case of Heineken, filled their boats with friends, snacks and copious amounts of alcoholic beverages and moved into the docks of the V&A Waterfront.  There they chose to raft up outside Quay Four, and enjoy the playings of Flat Stanley live in concert.

Friday saw us blow the mainsail at one of the seams, after the sail repair guys had closed for the weekend.  It was not ideal, and saw a levels of despondency starting to set in.  Motor trouble on Saturday did not help the situation, but the lovely sail we had down to Hout Bay on Sunday made everything just fine again.  While a bit misty at first, the mass of seals feeding and dolphins swimming alongside the boat made it the most amazing sail and helped detract from the stress that the previous week had left behind.

As I write, there are less that 96 hours until the start of the race.  We have been burning midnight oil trying to finish off the provisioning, and hopefully we will get it packed onto the boat tomorrow morning.

It is safe to say that Brennan's predictions of an average loss of 7kg per crew member will be wrong. After spending 2 hours packing jelly tots, chomps and smarties into packs of eight I can say with a great deal of confidence that the likelihood of a shortage of carbohydrates is very unlikely.