Nico’s dress code on deck: survival suits

CAMPER skipper Chris Nicholson blogs on the approaching front….. video below

Just getting dressed in my one-piece survival suit to go on deck.  As usual we’re downstairs and the boat feels like we’re doing a million miles an hour in a lot of breeze.

We’re going fast but Will our navigator tells me it’s just a really good angle. Yet again there isn’t a huge amount of breeze, but the performance of these boats is amazing. The difference between the last race and this race is in the order of knots faster.

We haven’t had a huge amount of breeze yet in this race – an average of maybe 20 knots at times – and yet two boats have dropped rigs and the chance for everyone has been really quite high and that’s because in 20 knots we’re sailing up to 25 – 26 knots of boat speed.

Ridiculous speeds and we have to manage this thing over the next few days in 30 knots plus of wind. That will be crunch time for this leg and will shape us for the future.  We had a little breeze last night, enough for me to feel that the boat will be really well behaved in those conditions.

Bow up, safe but extremely fast and we’ve got to keep our act together at night so that test will happen tomorrow afternoon and tomorrow night as the big front rolls over us.

Everyone is good on board. Mike PAmmenter is smiling which is rather unfortunate. As he opens his mouth and he sees those teeth! It’s aged him 10 years in a day, and he deserved that, so it’s a good thing.