Monday, 18 May 2009, 15:32 GMT
PUMA - Rick Deppe (Media Crew member)
Incredibly close at the scoring gate with il mostro and Telefonica Blue going at each other hard for first place. At first it looked as though we would be able to roll over them and lead into the mark but then a slight header allowed Telefonica Blue to just barely stick their bow out on us and this allowed them to wriggle out of trouble.
At the mark and with only about 1.5 boat lengths separating the boats, it was Telefonica Blue who sadly for us took the extra point and moved themselves a little further ahead in the overall standings... We've been extremely unlucky with the scoring gates throughout the race, having narrowly missed out on a number of occasions.
After the gate there was no time for recriminations as we had to tack almost immediately due to the orientation of the scoring gate and the Ice exclusion zone. Another strange and frustrating outcome to our two boat match race to the gate was that upon tacking and heading south around the exclusion zone, the two boats effectively went from leading the race to being well down the pack. Hopefully because the fleet is still fairly tight this will not have a negative effect on the outcome once we break free of the ice exclusion zone and start to make decisions regarding the second half of the race and start to point our bow at Galway - currently about 1800 miles away.
Ice exclusion zone... that would be for, errm, ICEBERGS. There probably aren't too many people on earth who haven't heard of "that" ship or seen "that" movie starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo di Caprio. As I mentioned we are sailing in thick fog and will shortly pass right by the place where the most famous marine disaster in history took place. I'm talking of course about the Titanic which in its day was the largest ocean liner ever built and was thought to be unsinkable... that boat struck an ICEBERG on its maiden voyage in April 1912 and sank resulting in over 1,500 fatalities....
Incidentally, the Titanic struck an iceberg in a location that falls outside of the ice exclusion zone! A sobering thought and for sure the guys will be keeping an extra vigilant lookout for the next few days.
Pleasant conditions on deck at the moment, and even though it's still foggy but the sun is trying to burn its way thru which will be nice if it succeeds. The spirit on board is pretty upbeat at the moment and everyone seems happy to be back at sea, which in some ways for us is more normal now than being on land. Even when you are ashore it’s sometimes hard to get yourself or your thoughts away from the boat, the inner voice telling you that there's one year of your life to get this right... it's not a rehearsal and coming back again depends on many things (i.e. having to go thru it all again)! Which could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your point of view, for me right now I'm not sure.
It sounds as though the second part of the trip is going to be fairly quick, which is nice and I'm looking forward to the as yet untasted "Green Dragon Butty", that will apparently be waiting for every sailor upon arrival in Galway.
Rick
Received 15:32 GMT