Cape to Rio 2014

Day 9 - Monday Evening 13 January. By Grant Chapman. We decided to hoist the big purple spinnaker when the wind was a constant 10knots from behind but not giving enough attention to detail and ensuring that the genoa was tightly hauled in first we made a horrible mess of the whole procedure and managed to tangle the spinnaker around the front halyard and genoa. We hadn’t managed to get the anti-wrap device up before hoisting the spinnaker and the problem was compounded ... Read more

Day 9 - Monday 13 January. By Grant Chapman. Daybreak arrived a lot later this morning as we headed further west with the sunlight squeezing through small gaps in a leaden sky that was heavily overcast. With a constant 16knots breeze behind us we swopped the genoa for the heavier white spinnaker as so much cloud suggested that we could be in for a few squalls. We didn’t want to risk damaging the big purple bag further as it was already starting to ... Read more

Day 8 - Sunday 12 January. By Grant Chapman. We still had the big purple spinnaker up come morning, having flown it all night with which we managed to keep up a respectable average of 7.5 knots. Very little happened today which seemed appropriate given it was an official day of rest. Peter visited the heads and didn’t reappear for almost 2 hours - it wasn’t his plumbing that was the problem but that of the boat’s which had become blocked and he ... Read more

Day 7 – Saturday 11 January. By Grant Chapman. We had become used to the serenading sound of Rotary Scout contentedly purring away to us in the early hours of the morning as she accelerated while surfing down the face of the waves created by the following swell, however this morning was different as she was eerily quiet. The purring we knew came from the prop auto rotating with the increase in boat speed and all we could hear on waking was the ... Read more

Day 6 - Friday Evening 10 January. By Grant Chapman. Shortly after we had settled down for the evening, having finished the daily blog entry and awaiting the tuna bake that was about to be served, things suddenly changed. The game fishing rods off the stern of the boat came alive as something big started running out the line on both reels like there was no tomorrow. Grant leapt off the helm which he handed over to Chris and Marcus was summoned from ... Read more

Day 6 - Friday 10 January. By Grant Chapman. The sun rose a lot later this morning as we started to move in a more westerly direction, the sky only becoming light after 4:00am Zulu (UTC – Universal Time Coordinataire or Greenwich Mean Time) which is 6:00am Bravo of course (SA Time). We had set our watches to UTC time on the second day out of Cape Town as all race correspondence was communicated to us based on UTC and without any means ... Read more

Day 5 - Thursday 9 January 2014. By Grant Chapman. We have sunshine again, a mild sea and fair south south east winds at 16 knots, as we had predicted from the sunset the night before. We goose-winged the genoa out on the pole in a following sea. Mark told us via SATphone that we were now in 4th place on handicap in our division. We assumed this is because we had gone north while the others had gone west. We were comfortable ... Read more

Day 5 - Wednesday 8 January. By Grant Chapman. Everyone slept very well and the sea had settled during the night, allowing us to put up the big purple scout spinnaker with the wind at a steady 16 to 20 knots from the South. We maintained a north west bearing to avoid the Low developing to the east that we had seen on our rather out-dated GRIB files and to skirt the high that we knew was likely to be to our West. ... Read more

Day 4 - Tuesday 7 January 2014. By Grant Chapman. We were still running with the swell in the early morning with a southerly wind pushing us along in a north westerly direction and a bit of blue sky starting to appear. Mid-morning we goose-winged the genoa out on the pole and started moving along nicely at 9 knots. Our previous thoughts of what the hell we thought we were doing embarking on this journey started to dissipate and we were back in ... Read more

Day 3 - Monday 6 January 2014. By Grant Chapman. The ever-resourceful Peter managed to fix the steering problem, made more challenging as the steering was permanently in use, so that the cables were running freely and we decided that we could proceed to Rio after all. We also discovered that we had lost our sailor satellite modem connection which meant that we were without emails and our all important GRIB files for the coming week and were still relying on the GRIB ... Read more