We had good and bad news over the last 24h. First it was Jess’ Birthday (Jeremy that is), but there we have to start with the bad news. Apparently, across the fleet boat run low on gas – us included. That hints that the bottles were not filled properly in Cape Town. The unfortunate consequence is that we need to restrict cooking. Therefore no more cakes. However, Sara was able to produce an amazing merengue with the rest heat of the oven after the bread came out. So there was a birthday ‘cake’ in the end.

Next bad news arrived per email: across the fleet there had been 3 failures of the shackle which holds the forestay, which is part of the rigging with holds the mast and on to with the Yankee sails get attached. We had to put a temporary fix/safety measure on it today, before it can be properly replaced in port. What the means is however, that we can not use our foresails in strong winds anymore this will slow us down and further delay our arrival to Fremantle.

In the good news, we are slowly catching up with the fleet and our next competitor, NASDAQ is only 250nm closer to the finish than we are – a day of good sailing and a distance that can be made good over a week if we are lucky (and they are not) … but we have some lighter winds coming up from behind us.

Yet, over that last full day we made again over 250nm in 24h and we are getting closer to Fremantle – still hoping to get there on the 26th.