BT Global Challenge - Leg 1 - 18th September

Madforsailing.com's diary writer, Andy Magrath, reports from LG FLATRON

Andy Magrath is one of our two diarists aboard the BT Global Challenge race leader, LG FLATRON. After worries about the southerly route they had taken, things are looking good again.

Andy Magrath, LG FLATRON Monday, 18th September, 2000.

The current course is 250 degrees, I'm sitting at the communications station and I can hear the helm talking to the spinnaker trimmers. We have the 1.5 ounce race spinnaker up in 14 knots of wind, we've just peeled it from the lightweight 0.75 ounce spinnaker. That involves me climbing out to the end of the spinnaker pole (15 feet), I free climb rather than use a halyard as it is much quicker. When I get there I clip myself to the end of the pole, and then fasten the tack of the new spinnaker to the end of the pole, so the others can hoist it. When the new spinnaker is up, I then have to release the tack of the old spinnaker, so it can be pulled down, before fastening the spinnaker gear to the tack of the new sail and releasing it from the pole.

I've just finished lunch and soon I will be in my bunk. We are in first place with Spirit of Hong Kong 16 miles behind us in second. In the last 24 hours we sailed into the patch of high pressure that Conrad (skipper) and Cian (navigator) have been worrying about, and we experienced some light wind. But we are starting to come out the other side of it now. The hope is that although we expect the fleet to bunch up behind us in the short term, we will be first with this new breeze and pull out a commanding lead!
The tactics for the race have gone well so far. We went south initially - for the first five days - with a view to picking up south-west winds to drive us north, before getting a windshift to the north-west to take us to Boston. The problem we had was that the south-west winds were not as established as we hoped, and we ran the risk of getting stuck in the large high pressure hovering over the North Atlantic. We worked hard to reposition to the north, and now we are on a level playing field with the rest of the fleet and are more confident that we can do well. The yachts that took a more northerly course from day one have prospered - hindsight is a wonderful thing!

Conrad's told us that we have made a difficult route work well. The competitive pressure on the boat is high. We all want to do well and we are concentrating the whole time when on watch. We're sticking to 30 minutes on the helm, any more than that and even our top helms will be performing past their best.

Generally the weather has been kind to us, although we've taken a bit of a pounding from the sun. Tim works with me on the bow, and we've had our first roughish sail change, going down from the big jib to the small one. The waves were enough to knock us completely off our feet a number of times, leaving us flailing on the foredeck! I managed to only bruise a shin, which I consider lucky. All of this is nothing compared to what we are going to experience on later legs of the race - and the water will be much colder. The next sked will be interesting as we are expecting to have extended our lead. But now it is time to get some rest.