A tale of woe and closed doors

Andy McGrath's sullen diary from LG Flatron, due to finish eighth into La Rochelle

We are about to cross the finish line of leg six of the BT Global Challenge 2000-2001. We have been racing hard for 39 days and nights from Cape Town to La Rochelle. It is a beautiful sunny day and starboard watch are about to hoist the promo spinnaker as we bear away towards the line.
We will be finishing in 8th place, but we maintain our race lead overall over Compaq in 2nd place. Our results so far are 3rd, 1st, 1st, 2nd and 1st so 8th is not a position to which we are accustomed. I have covered some of the reasons for this in earlier journals.

The latest installment is that as the lead boats were on a making tack around Cape Finisterre and bore away across the Bay of Biscay the door closed behind them and we found ourselves tacking up the Portuguese coast, round Cape Finisterre and then on the nose again all the way across the Bay of Biscay. The effect of our result is that we are stronger as a team and even more determined to nail our first position overall as we sail from La Rochelle to Southampton.

We leave France on Tuesday and should arrive in Ocean Village lunchtime a week on Sat. Between now and Tuesday we will prepare the boat better than ever before ready to take on the other 11 yachts in the final installment of this fantastic yacht race.