Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast is served!

Last night, the crew drank like the condemned. Today we were delivered a breakfast of champions! Panerai provided a hamper to each boat filled with goodies - pastries, smoked salmon, ham, cheese, breads, fruit, juices, yoghurt, sweet biscuits, cakes and chocolate milk for the children. These came with a card announcing "Days left -2" and including a quote from J. Conrad:

"Facing it - always facing it - that's the way to get through"

Panerai breakfast emerges

The other boats are frantically provisioning now with supplies streaming onto the pontoons. The crew of Marie des Isles seem to be planning on eating nothing but dried pasta, whilst the charterers on The Blue Peter have bought nothing but Mars bars and confectionary. I feel calmly satisfied that all our packing and provisioning is complete. We will buy some fresh bread tomorrow and that is all now. The other crews are now drooling enviously over our menu plans as they are taking their racing and weight reduction much more seriously. Another of the smaller vessels has no water maker and they are now fretting about dehydration. We may offer to sell them some of ours en-route, or drop supplies in our wake for the needy following behind.

Fresh veg stored over the bunks in nets

We also now have a French Classic handicap or Jauge Classique of 0.9384. For those who are interested in that sort of thing, our certificate can be viewed here, and the full list of rated yachts is here. The rating seem fair, although James now fancies Valteam as the boat to beat as she has a flattering handicap for her length. Six boats rate higher than us but we also have a ten hour penalty as we did not participate in a feeder leg.

The race route is finalised with a parade start along the sea front at Cascais at noon on Sunday before we bear away. There is a waypoint at Selvagem Pequena to starbord (a rock about 100 miles north of the Canary Islands) then straight to Barbados. They plan to finish us to the south of the island so we don't spend hours trying to make the last few miles into wind as we round up for Bridgetown. We also have our safety instructions - if the Argos shows we have stopped or have turned off track, or if it stops transmitting, the organisation are notified immediately by the MRCC so we must call in at once if we stop intentionally for any reason. Boats will then be diverted to our position. We are hopeful we won't be the last in the fleet on real time.


We were expecting some school children today but we fear the squally weather has deterred them. This has also confined our two to the boat but we hope to let them run around all day tomorrow for one last time. Tonight we are looking forward to the Official Crew Dinner before our last full day ashore.