Cape to Rio 2020

Day 20 - Thursday 23 January 2020 By Ewan Blamire & Joshua Jackson The first few hours of the day were quiet as many eager faces gathered around the cockpit. After our first twelve days of hard sailing we had reached the first major milestone of our long journey, crossing the Greenwich meridian. For many of our crew this was their first time doing an ocean crossing and Dom sat waiting for this precious moment but soon after crossing his words were, “I ... Read more

Day 19 - Wednesday 22 January 2020 We had a pleasant surprise yesterday when we had a sudden downpour which allowed us to soap up on deck and have our first decent fresh water shower on the trip. There have been several suggestions previously that once we are close enough to Rio we can use our drinking water to shower so the timing was good. Even those on the helm at the time managed to multitask as they steered and washed themselves ... Read more

Day 16 to 18 - Sunday 19 to Tuesday 21 January 2020 By Nic Chapman and Daniel Skriker After keeping a very steady position on 21 and a bit degrees latitude for several days and averaging over 7 knots on occassions we hit a bit of a dilemma because our emails stopped working and we also couldn't get GRIB files to plot our weather routing. We eventually learnt that for some reason our data connection had maxed out at 10MB which was odd ... Read more

Day 12,13,14 & 15 - Wednesday 15 - Saturday 18 January 2020 By Nicholas Chapman Our apologies for the delay in sending our blog. I'm afraid we've been flat out trying to maximize our speed by swopping sails continuosly - well that's our excuse but we've admittedly also been having a swell time on board (excuse the pun) cooking all sorts of amazing meals and having interesting conversations. Life on board is really wonderful and apart from the responsibility of being on watch ... Read more

Day 9 - 11 - Sunday 12 - Tuesday 13 January 2020 By Dominic Holling The first 7 days of our trip went by incredibly fast and it did not seem like we had been sailing across the Atlantic for a week. Although it felt short, each day was very different and we were all adjusting to life on board. Now it seems that we have reached a different stage of the trip. Daily routines have started to kick in and we have ... Read more

Day 8 - Saturday 11 January 2020 By Mika Wessels Our shift was amazing. Not only was it the first time on this journey that we didn’t wake up for our watch dead tired, but it was also the first time we stayed up and took on a part of the next watch pair’s time due to our sheer enjoyment of the surroundings. The time was spent conversing, surfing the waves and playing solitaire or soduko (of which I played so much that ... Read more

Day 7 - Friday 10 January 2020 By Dominic Holling 7th day into the race, one week of sailing to Rio done, and wow has it been an amazing trip so far. Having caught 2 fish, hitting a top speed of 12.5 knots, having witnessed many beautiful sunsets and sunrises and having dolphins off our bow. Day 7 was a good day. We have made a whole roster system for cooking and cleaning and have also made meal lists to use all of our ... Read more

Day 6 - Thursday 09 January 2020 By Daniel Skriker The challenge posed by the passage from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro is the decision of how far north to sail before making the left turn towards Rio. If you turn too early, you might get stuck in the South Atlantic High, an area of the ocean that has light to no wind. If you turn too late, you’ll end up sailing an extra distance. The race thus far has certainly posed an ... Read more

Day 5 - Wednesday 08 January 2020 By Mika Wessels Waking up at 00:00 in the morning to do a two hour shift is sometimes difficult, but that’s when Josh and I have our shift. For the last couple of days it has been quiet. The wind has turned itself down a couple of notches these last two days, such that we have only managed to cover a third or fourth of the distance we usually do in a day. What that makes ... Read more

Day 4 - Tuesday 07 January 2020 By Max Elsworth and Nicholas Chapman. The fourth day was a good day for sailing. We managed to cover lots of ground and flew the spinnaker for most of the day. While traveling at a decent speed Max spotted an orange object off our bow to starboard. This turned into a mini mission as we tried to gybe round and pick it up, we found out as we got closer that it was an anchor buoy and ... Read more