Overview of Race 1: Southampton to Madeira

Here is the story of race one to Madeira - We had an ok start clawing a few places back and rounded the marker in about 5th. We then took the bold move to go west for the wind. Apparently when the skippers and race officials looked at what we were doing they all thought we had this race in the bag! Oh how mother nature can deal cruel blows! No wind!! All forecasts wrong! We ended up going to anchor on three separate occasions just to stop us going backwards! The last time we were anchored in over 100m of water with 400m of rope and chain! This was a nightmare to pull up by hand and having it wrapped around our keel did not help. We needed to get Tom in the sea to see what was going on After a mamoth haul of the anchor we eventually started to get going . From then on it was almost too late our gamble had not paid off and we were at the back of the fleet could we get back in the game ? Well by some miracle we did! some hard work, multiple sail changes and some brave helming through up to force 8/9 storms left us ahead of Edinborough and just behind Geraldton! The last 48 hours were a blur, we worked so hard as a crew really pulling together and when we crossed the line..... 8th!!! We were elated you would have thought we had won! And I'm sure we did as we will take more from that hard won 8th than an easy 1st.