Racing down to the wire in the Global Ocean Race leg 2

We had our christmas at sea and as expected it was no normal christmas, but we tried our best! We had a small present opening session in the morning which involved eating enough chocolate to make us feel sick then a small arts and crafts moment as we made a Christmas tree, complete with hanging chocolates, and taped it to the wall. In the afternoon we had our christmas dinner, which as feared was a vegetarian curry in a bag. I had saved up a couple packets of the less favoured chicken tikka masala and extracted the chicken to convert mine into a homemade chicken curry.

Sam Goodchild in Christmas spirit!

We had thick fog the whole day with visibility to a couple hundred meters at the best of times. However the bright side was, our 3 day wait for wind finally came to an end as we started covering some decent miles again. And with it we were able to make gains on second place, BSL. By the evening we were slamming upwind in 20-25knots. I spent 15 minutes on the bow doing a sail change with every other wave drenching me from head to toe and the only thing I could think of was it was mid-afternoon in the UK and there were millions of people stuffing their faces on copious amounts of good food that I could only dream about. Jealousy reached an all time high!
Boxing day we spent slamming up wind and pushing hard, spending most of the time hand steering and keep activities to the minimum….eating, sleeping, sailing and a bit of navigating. This was because we expected to be loosing to BSL with the weather situation, thankfully though it seems to have paid off for the moment and we are hanging onto a 150 mile lead.

The wind is now decreasing and the slamming has almost stopped. We are 390 miles form Cook Strait where we finally get to turn right for the 100 mile home strait. Unfortunately the weather is all but simple between here and there, with the potential of the wind disappearing again which, could see our lead cut dramatically like last week. We have done everything but relaxed and will keep pushing to the finish, its definitely not over till we have crossed the finish line, which we hope will be in about 3 days.

All for now from Sam aboard Cessna Citation.