Day 17

580 nautical miles to Rio. I thought we would never lose the six in the front of that number. Last night was another night with close to nothing wind, very de-motivating to say the least. Needless to say ladies and gentlemen - the breeze is back up (it’s all relative of course) and Ciao Bella is currently making the bubbly noises she is so good at making.

Big Bertha is back. Just after she thought she was retiring she got called back up to the front again. If she gets her way, the wind will tick north and she will get a chance to pass the baton to Jemima (our asymmetrical spinnaker) to do the final slog.

Seven kilogram challenge still going strong (see day 3 update). So far dad is still up there to take top-honours. There has been concern raised around the last three days of high-carb meals with limited carb-burning activity to go with it. Rumours have also surfaced about an ice-cold Heineken awaiting at the finish. This has spiked up more debate. Specifically around whether one can deduct the 330g off your final weight so to get a true reading. No decision has been made as yet.

The culinary challenge has tapered off a bit. There is only a certain number of ways you can cook spaghetti. The pancake princess also had her final flapjack making session yesterday. Fruit cake and zoo biscuits are the only thing saving at this point. Right now the motivation of early arrival into Rio is shifting from the thoughts of a podium finish, to that of sinking one's teeth into a 500g rump steak.

Dad is into his 5th day of wearing shorts. Dad never wears shorts. Not in 25 years have I seen him wear shorts for this long a period. This move to shorts also coincided with the wind dying off. A decision has been made that should the wind not pick up substantially by the end of today, dad will have to move back to long-pants.

The blog and tracker has no doubt had a detrimental impact on certain firm’s productivity levels, not to speak of bandwidth levels. We have thus taken the initiative to help you draw up your own little excel model to work out the needed finishing times (see below). This way when the boss walks past you know longer need to frantically minimize a million internet explorer screens, but rather look at him coolly and explain that you are working on cash projections for the next while. I do believe some stakes were taken on this race so you wouldn’t be far wrong.

We have started to see new signs of life. Phosphoretic plankton is in abundance and flying fish are back with no suicides for eight days running. We also found a blue-bottle on deck this morning - no idea. The grave- yard shift (GYS) has made claims of ghost-dolphins. Those that you can’t see, but you can hear and know are there. No one believes them. Bradley did spot a "lighthouse" two nights ago and even took the initiative to take a compass bearing. This has since lost the GYS all credibility.

Everyone is very excited about the last couple of miles. Michaela and Ryan are now both doing night-shifts. This does end up depleting our hot chocolate and jelly-tots rations. The great enthusiasm and sparkle in eyes that you witness as they put on their harnesses at some unearthly hour makes the sacrifice worthwhile.

Send us some of your wind Cape Town...

From your email-loving, meat-deprived and oh-so-over-rice cakes-and-cheese,

Team Ciao Bella.

Handicap calculation goes as follows:

The days we need to finish in:

Days taken by C2C * 24 * CTC's handicap

-----------------------------------------

CB's handicap * 24

So, if CTC finishes at 12h00 on day 16:

= 16 * 24 * 1.151

 -----------------

  1.024 * 24

Or something like that.

Handicaps of the fleet:

Cape Storm 1.104

City of Cape Town 1.151

Izivunguvungu 1.103

Grand Filou 1.304

Perie Banou 0.918

Prodigy 1.383

Ciao Bella 1.024

Yachtport 1.114

Me2me 1.004

Xtra-link 1.093