If Heineken did ocean racing ............

January 20, 2009

If Heineken did Ocean Racing, it would be on a luxury 72ft Oyster, complete with electric everything, Air Con, Flat Screens and lots of DVD's, hot and cold running showers, coupled with 15 Knt trade winds across the South Atlantic.

If Heineken did ocean racing - it would be on Kealoha 8 - currently leading the cruising fleet to Brazil.

Kealoha 8 - 800 miles from the finish:

Note to the sponsors - the things we'll do for a free T Shirt. FYI we are all over 18 thus please don't give all the fine product and free clothing to those boys on Leopard & Rambler - save some for the real sailors, who will hopefully arrive at the weekend

While after circa 30,000 miles we know we are tough sailors, the sea mountains off Tonga , the cyclones off Australia , the wild East coast of Africa etc , prove that we can tough it out when the wind and water gets up - equally the unseasonably light winds of the South Atlantic (in race conditions) make for a completely different type of toughness - days of less then 10knts - coasting along , with the "distance to go" , never seeming to decrease - No one said that Sailing RTW would be easy, in many regards slow sailing is just as tough as heavy weather sailing - doing so under race conditions with the ever changing game of snakes & ladders with the rest of the fleet mean we follow the daily position reports as if we were on the Volvo.