14 12 950N 057 12 023W
Fair Do's VII, Atlantic 2008....
Professor John Shepherd
Mon 8 Dec 2008 19:34
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Good evening from the final stretch of the
Atlantic
As you can no doubt see we are a grand total of
215NM from the NE corner of St Lucia and approximately 221NM to the finish which
is at the NW side of the island in Rodney Bay.
Things could not be closer between ourselves, P42
and Earendil so we are trying to eak all we can out the boat and keep strecthing
the distance out of them as once we finish we have to sit and wait an watch the
clock tick by until the time owed to them on handicap expires.
It is still entirely plausible that some of the
slower boats - some of whom we already owe as much as 4 days 14 hours on
handicap could steam up to the finish in better breeze and beat us all, but
we have calculated theoretical required winning margins based upon their best days mileage in the race, not an exact
science but as close as we can get.
We had a chat tonight about how we will handle the
finish, with watches finishing around 30 miles from St Lucia tomorrow
(which we expect to be about 1900 - 2100 tomorrow evening) and us all reverting
to starting positions so we can sail the boat as quickly as we can and navigate
our way the shortest distance to the finish around the coast of St Lucia - it is
meant to be quite windy so it could be exciting.
We hope to finish in the region of midnight Tuesday
night (GMT) though time will tell.
Tomorrow should be our last day of early morning
e-mails with Chris Tibbs (the weatherman) - I think we'll need to let him down
gently as I am sure he enjoys the early morning banter as much as we
do.
That is all for now, here is hoping for good breeze
and plenty of miles tonight.
Emily - well done on the competition win, no doubt
your aim is better than ours despite all the pratice we have had this race. We
all think time may be better spent revising than RSI Wii
style!
Regards,
Duncan
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