We arrived to Fremantle, Australia last Tuesday, just 23 days after we had left Cape Town. Although we were only one day and just under eight hours behind the leader, this meant place nine. This is not what we had hoped for nor does it reflect the work we put into this race. However, we try to focus on the positive take aways, of which there are many.

Our passage from Cape Town to Fremantle

We had variable conditions, with wind strength below ten knots where it was hard to move along and wind around 50 knots. With the varied wind strengths came different sea states. From +5m waves to almost flat seas, we saw occasional cross seas as the weather systems moved passed us. We had some sunny days, some rainy days, often there was very little contrast between the sea and the cloudy sky, which made helming quite a challenge especially at night.

And we managed to get through this without any major damage. We had a few smaller holes in different sails, which we however mostly repaired as we discovered them. There were also a few technical failures, most noteworthy the WiFi-Router, which limited our communications. This is also the reason there was no update on this blog for the past two weeks. I will try to post some reports from the race in the upcoming days.

In addition, we upped our game. We tried to get as many different crew on the helm in various conditions to allow everyone to improve their helming skills. I was in the lucky position to help a few of them manage conditions, they had never seen before. It is a real privilege seeing them improve and grow as we got them into more and more challenging conditions. Plus it helps me reflect on what I do and how that could be improved. This and all the guidance I received over the last few months have helped me to continuously improve as well.

4^th Month – 4^th Continent

Already before we could see land, we started to smell it. We could not really agree as to what the smell was. It would be our fourth continent since leaving Portsmouth end of August, after stopping in Spain, Uruguay and South Africa previously. Luckily enough, we approached Fremantle in the morning, so that we could see where we were going. In the last couple of days we had already started to clean the boat to prepare for the Bio-Security inspection we would have to go through upon arrival.

When we came around Rottnest Island we could see Power of Seattle. There were times when it seemed possible to catch them, but they were almost across the finish line whereas we had still a few more miles to go. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the sail to the finish line with some good winds. While we had not done any tacks for quite a long time, we had to tack twice to get over the finish line.

The entry to port was then a little difficult, since we had an issue with our main engine. I will give more details on this in a separate post. But with the help of some RIBs we were able to safely dock on the quarantine pier and go through the Bio-Security inspection and immigration. All the officers were very professional and friendly. They cleared us within one hour so that we could finally step ashore. The Fremantle Sailing Club greeted us with some hot dogs and cold drinks, which we gladly accepted.

Deep Clean and Maintenance

The following day we started with the deep clean, which progressed a bit faster since a lot had been done at sea already. This gave us some time off in the afternoon, before starting with the maintenance work on the following day.

As we did not suffer a lot of damage, the maintenance list was pretty short. It was mainly the regular bits of maintenance work, which we have mostly finished by now. This leaves the entire crew with a couple of rest days before setting sail again on the 21st December for Christmas at sea.

Over the next few days I will try to see some of West-Australia, recover and update this blog. So stay tuned but forgive me, if there won’t be too many updates as I will try to take some rest as well.