Assessing the damage

Sam Davies cursing herself for slowing down yesterday in the Artemis Transat

Hello!

What a crazy 48 hours it has been!

I got away nicely from the Ice Gate, and then things went wrong.... Luckily I had been sitting down, so I was fine when we hit the whale. My inspection on deck showed a large impact on the daggerboard where the whale had caused it to pivot in its casing. The leading edge had hit the deck and caused a fair bit of damage to the board. On lifting it, I discovered similar damage on the respective leading and trailing edges of the board where they had been touching their chocks. I think I got away lightly, given the other boats' problems, but I am limited to only half of my broken board, so port tack is hard now!

The crash freaked me out a bit, and for the rest of the day I couldn't stop thinking about hitting something. So that night I sailed a bit nervously and reefed down sooner than usual, as Roxy was doing speeds of 18+ knots and it was all a bit much.

I am really cross with myself for having slowed down. On top of that I found myself in another personal wind whole yesterday morning (that the others didn't get), and the result is that I have been overtaken. I am so frustrated by all this.

So, a new day is here, Roxy is speeding along upwind in 25 knots of wind and I have a new challenge - to try to get back past Cali ( Akena Verandas) and Yannick ( Cervin ENR), who actually aren't too far ahead of me. I have gone from being the hunted to being the hunter and I'm going to do all I can to catch them!

Sam x”