Blogs

Tuesday saw winds peaking at 23 knots for the Artemis Challenge. Eight boats took to the start line for some really close racing and a true spectacle of how exciting the Open 60 are fully powered up. Ecover 3 and Aviva challenged for the start line and we all sailed hard and fast through the showers towards the Needles.

Our adventures in the Pays Basque were VERY tiring, but LOTS of fun!

We set off three weeks ago, in a nice Bay of Biscay storm - Westerly wind 30-45 knots! That was another good training session, as we screamed down towards Biarritz at speeds of over 20 knots! 14 hours after leaving Lorient, we swapped our ski-masks and drysuits for shorts and T-shirt as the wind dropped off and the sun came out.

A damp, windy and bleak day greeted me early on Wednesday morning as I arrived at Howth Yacht Club in Dublin, Ireland. A worried looking group of Brokers and clients for Aviva had gathered around a salty sea dog in the form of Liam Lalore. He was to be our skipper for the day onboard Arctic Fox, a Bavaria 38. Fred McCollum had prepared breakfast and instructed his crew to look after us. The forecast was not great and the gusts in excess of thirty knots were whistling through the marina.

Now that we've finished rowing naked... 

A friend of Lin's recently sent us a funny quote: 'Rowing harder doesn't help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction' - Kenichi Ohmae 

Last week was a first for me as I sailed the whole 4 day trip with the young people from the Ellen MacArthur Trust!
 
It was wonderful to be there from the moment everyone arrived, going through the team building work and hearing the giggles and amusement as we all began to do all sorts of challenges, some with blindfolds on!  
 
The young people were just fantastic, a mixed group from London and Northern Ireland. Extremely funny, quite entertaining and hugely inspirational!  
 

It’s been very busy here since the Artemis Transat, but things are moving forwards. We noticed this morning that on the skipper page of the Vendee Globe website we had been moved from the “Pre-registered skippers” side to the “Registered skippers” side and our race entry number is 25, so that‘s it, we‘re officially in! It’s quite a milestone for us after ten years of work. We’ve been smiling all day!