Who hasn't hit a whale?

Sam Davies reports on her first marine mammal encounter in the Artemis Transat

At 1200 GMT, Sam Davies on Roxy was in 5th position, 809 miles away from the finish line.

Hello all,

I apologize for not writing earlier but I have to admit that I haven’t had my best 24 hours. After being stuck with no wind yesterday, my smile came back when the wind started to pick up. Enjoying to sail properly again, I was on deck working hard changing sails and trimming (and at last putting away the code 0) when I heard a big bang. It was quite foggy so I didn’t see anything in the water but from the noise it made, straight away, I was sure that it was a whale. I don’t think it was a container as that would have been a much harder hit. It was really scary as I have never hit anything before. I checked the keel immediately and everything seemed fine. Back on deck, I pulled my daggerboard up to check it and realized that it was damaged and cracked. Now I can’t put it all the way down, so I have to use only half of it. Naturally, just after that happened, the wind increased massively.

I had a crazy night after that bad experience. We experienced gusts of up to 37 knots, which was less than what I had previously expected. However, due to the shock of hitting a whale, I couldn’t help slowing down a bit. I couldn’t stop thinking about hitting something again. I had to cope with really unstable conditions, going from one extreme to the other. And as if I didn’t have enough, I had to tack. At one point I had three reefs in my mainsail and the next I had to hoist the whole mainsail back up again. Because of the stress and all these manoeuvres, I am now really tired, and frustrated as I am back in no wind! I have to get some rest as I am expecting more wind in a few hours and I don’t want to see the competitors behind, who are further south and probably have better conditions, to catch up. Everything is fine onboard Roxy now, and with just a few more days before the finish line I am not going to stop fighting now!

Sam

http://www.roxysailing.com