Slow going...

0700 
Boat Speed 7.8 knots
280.4 miles behind Groupama's record
 

Busy night here with no wind, no daggerboard and 2 of our 4 man watch on daggerboard repair duty. Pym and Yvon worked through the night with just a short nap, to build a carbon reinforced rebate into the bottom of the daggerboard to hold the 2 sides of the daggerboard together. Now they are filling in this large rebate with a mix of glue and cut up pieces of high density foam to make a nice hydrodynqmic tip to the now ultra short board. Last job is to put carbon over this endcap and to scarfe it into the carbon sides so that the board is not a millimetre wider than before – otherwise it won,t fit back into the case.

Hopefully it will be back in for the evening. All this night we have had winds from every direction possible, and so have gybed and tacked dozens of times, with the wind generally less than 5 knots. Sailing with no daggerboard is a little like a dinghy without one; not a lot of upwind progress.

Still pretty foggy here, though not too cold with the water at 12C.  We should be trickling across the 0 meridian later this morning. It has taken most of the night to get from Heathrow Airport longitude to Hammersmith, now just a few more miles to Greenwich – we are certainly walking at the moment and not going by motorbike!

Bx