Kipper Sailing

Since the start of this leg, just over 48hrs ago, we've covered 182 miles. That's and average SOG of only 3.8kts, but still just enough to enable us to finish within the time limit. The second 24hrs were much better than the first, sailing directly to our next waypoint off the north Norfolk coast, now 271 miles distant, at speeds ranging from 5 to 6.6kts. Sadly though, now, as forecast, the wind is dropping and we're facing a slow and probably very frustrating 24 hours. Earlier positions relayed by Emma, told us that the trailing boat in Class 3, 66 miles ahead of us, was totally becalmed at 2100. We're now halfway between our 2100 position and there and are hoping and praying that, by the time we get there, the centre of the high pressure will have moved sufficiently east to allow us some wind. Inevitably though it'll be on the nose and very light.

Tides are a bigger issue in the North Sea than they are up the west coast of the British Isles and we're moving towards Springs, so we'll need some careful strategies, especially as we near the latitude of The Wash. The tide obviously runs stronger inshore than offshore so, because we expect head winds and will be tacking, out tentative plan is to go in when the tide is with us and out when it's against us. But that's all probably 3 days hence.

We've had to dodge a couple of oil rigs but they've not prevented us from going where we want to go, so far. Further south, to the south and east of the Dogger Bank, the density is much higher and we'll have to plan carefully in order to avoid sailing further than we have to.

Right now we're reaching at 3ktsunder spinnaker. We put it up half and hour ago when the wind was well aft and continuing to veer. Of course, now it's up, the wind has swung back the other way and we're having to sail 30 degrees low of the course in order to keep it flying. We'll review the situation again in half and hour.

From the 2100 positions it looks like the following gaggle of Class 4 boats have closed the gap on us, so it's all to play for over the next 24-48 hours. The boats well ahead, off the north Norfolk coast are sailing into light headwinds and we can see that our mates on Ding Dong, who are in strong contention for overall IRC victory are beating down towards Dunganess in light SW winds. We wish them the very best of luck.