During the first night at sea the wind strengthened and we found ourselves facing 40 knots of wind (gusts up to 50) exactly from the direction we wanted to go. This meant that we had to beat into this weather for several hours, forcing us to first head southwest (yes, this is not a typo – it was southwest), before being able to turn further south and eventually southeast. I can tell you this is not a great feeling when you know that the distance to your destination is not decreasing, but actually increasing, at such an early stage of the leg – but that’s the law of nature: it’s not possible to sail against the wind. 

The constant smashing into the big waves made it crucial to secure you on deck with the help of the so-called 'jackstays', which run across the deck with an orange tether that each of us has on their life jacket. Additionally, it’s also a good idea to be very alerted when moving below deck (side note: most injuries during the last race happened below deck). Unfortunately, two of our crew were injured in the first 48 hours of the race. Luckily, none of the injuries were too severe, yet meant that both of them could not do any work on deck for the entire first week.

After an again intense beginning, including people being seasick, the wind and sea calmed down and eventually allowed us to make some progress in the right direction. Due to wind and currents our rough game plan for the leg was to head south/southeast first, approximately the latitude of 43 degrees south, before making our way east and only turn north to Albany when we already would be close to Australia. This would allow us to stay between high-pressure systems in the South Indian Ocean and the low-pressure systems in the Southern Ocean. Our crossing of this mighty ocean was to our surprise not as tough as we all had expected it to be - we must have made a good impression to Neptune when we crossed the equator. Only in two occasions the wind picked up to 50 knots (gusts up to 60) and waves reached the height of a two-storey building. Luckily, these never lasted for more than 12 hours and the tri-sail (replacement for the mainsail for very stormy conditions) only had one appearance one deck, yet never was hoisted. For the rest of the time we occasionally were overtaken by smaller cold fronts (30 to 40 knots), which forced us to reef the mainsail (decrease the size of the sail) and change to a smaller headsail. However, we once also had the other extreme side of the weather – no wind at all with a perfectly flat ocean around us. This was of course a quite frustrating moment for us as crew, when you are on deck, see and especially hear the sails flogging, but cannot do much about it other than dropping them, in order to avoid any damage as they beat against the rigging.

In the last five days of the leg, when we started to head northeast towards Albany, we managed to squeeze through a narrow corridor between a high-pressure system (no wind) to the northwest and a huge wind hole to the southeast. Due to a virtual barrier at 44 degrees longitude, we were unable to sail further south and bypass the area with no wind, but had no option than going for the risky corridor option. In the end we were able to make enough miles per day and scrape through the small gap, which allowed us to decrease the distance to two competitors in front of us. Unfortunately, we did not catch them before the finish, but still were pleased to have managed to reduce the gap between us to 50nm.

Before the start of this leg, I was expecting to mainly have wind from the aft – sailing on a beam reach – thus allowing us to fly the codes for most of the time. However, code 1 and 3 only made one appearance on deck, while code 2 stayed in the sail locker for the entire trip. Therefore, we did not reach any top speed (19 knots is still the highest we managed so far) while surfing down a bigger wave. This is hopefully changing on our way to Sydney.