Please send Mumma 60th birthday wishes to me! Tom gets saved by the daggerboard

Hi Everyone! In case it wasn’t clear already – this is Phoebe posting these (no I didn’t add all the bits about how helpful I was!) on mum’s behalf, she’s emailing them from the satellite phone.

It’s now looking like she won’t get here in time for her 60th birthday – see photo below. So please do email me any birthday wishes you would like to have forwarded onto her and I can send to the satellite phone. No photos or videos I’m afraid until she’s nearer land for phone signal. Please email or whatsapp me on phoebe@gormleyandgamble.com or +447577461740

Let’s try to make her birthday as fun as can be at sea with no booze!!!

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January 25 Day 16

On my watch from 12 to 3am I had to pass a small sailing boat called Selena, she is not on the Arc Rally. It was doing between 1 and 2 knots of speed, we were behind her when I took over from Tom and he had warned me she was bobbing around in all directions. As we were doing well over 5 knots we decided to head north and get well out of her way. So exciting to see another boat but sad to be passing so close in pitch darkness without saying hello!

We were impressed to hear the first boat has arrived in St Lucia, Mowgli, a big racing monohull. In the morning we had frustratingly little wind, and the men have been trying to remember their school trigonometry trying to work out the quickest route while our deadline to get there by my birthday slips!

The decision was made, with the aid of a few satellite messages confirming that everyone was tacking, and with their trig calculations worked out, it would be faster to tack north in the current wind conditions. Just been corrected on my sailing terminology, we are actually gybing downwind! Disappointingly our screen was back telling us 3 to 4 days to our destination. However the wind picked up in the afternoon and with Ginger Gennaker puffed out we started to make good speeds once again. We dodged some big squalls and had a few downpours to navigate our way through.

Dark skies and Ginger Spice up

We changed our clocks once again, Tom taking on the extra hour during his shift. With the winds around 20 knots and night approaching we decided to take the Ginger Gennaker down, a lot more of an effort in these winds. Tom was on the helm and went up to help Rowan and Luke who were bringing the snuffer sock down, the wind caught the rope running to the back which caught Tom, flinging him to the side which luckily smacked him into the dagger board, otherwise he would have been flung overboard. Han and I were inside and heard him smack back into the window after bouncing off the dagger board. He was so lucky it wasn’t worse but he has a nasty rope mark across his neck and shoulder, and a little tear behind his ear. Very sobering, we all learnt a few lessons from it.

(This is as good as the satellite phone photo can send!)

We pumped Tom with Ibuprofen (luckily the skin on his neck and shoulder was not broken) and recovered with a few rounds of cards accompanied with Han’s delicious home made guacamole and mocktails. My three living herb plants are being well used, coriander in the guacamole and mint in the mocktails.

With Sporty the Code sail up we hoped to make good progress. However the wind and rain picked up to well over 20 knots before midnight so for safety and comfort she was brought down and the jib raised.