Come on United...

DAY 7 - 1st December 2007

Position: 23º 10' N 34º 02' W
Bearing: 260º
Distance to go: 1623 Nm

One of my favourite watches is the 06.00 to 12.00 shift. It starts out quite difficult as you are still tired but once the sun comes up it has a miraculous effect. As the sky lights up, the warm air brightens everyone's mood. The only problem this morning was that the sun made a late appearance to allow some squally rain to come through. Our latest watch game is to go through the reefs from 1 to 2 and then 2 to 1 and then 1 to 2 again. So much fun! The wind did offer me my best helming speed yet with 11.2 kn as my personal record, although Dave beat me almost straight away with 1.4kn.

We were on course to beat the boat's daily mileage record until the wind dropped. Final result was a near miss by 1 nautical mile.

The sun made an appearance later in the day and we had some steady trade winds unfortunately from the wrong direction leading to a gybe and a sail change. We took down the twin headsails leaving just the No. 1 Genoa on port tack. Sounds easy? That's a lot of sail to depower and control, which required teamwork, effort, co-ordination and of course someone to film it!

There were 2 uncertainties today and they both concerned Mark from our watch. The first was his cooking abilities as he volunteered to help John cook the dinner. Our fantastic food has been well documented and the two guys were attempting to fill Susie's big shoes. As they say in football...the boys done good. Football was Mark's other worry as he spent the evening watch worrying about Leeds United's results. In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and I'm sitting next to a Leeds fan!

Our final watch change resembled a stamped as we flew down into our bunks. Sleep, sweet sleep.


You can track the progress of Northern Child, which is updated every hour, on their web site at: northernchild.com