By Brian Hancock
It was a photo finish in Cape Town fit for a photo. I know that I have said before but how do you arrange a full moon going down just as the sun is coming up? The McIntyre Ocean Globe Race either have some great connections or a big budget (joke) to pull that off as the French yacht Evrika, skippered by Dominique Dubois, rocked and rolled into that beautiful city also known as Cape Town. Takes some planning to pull that off but it was a spectacular sight and welcome to the Mother City. There are some piña coladas waiting for you. Just take a shower first.
Then the Saffa’s on Sterna came in just in time to pick up the thrown beer cans left over after (sorry for those that think I may have been making too many reference to rugby in a sailing update), but, well SA did win it and according my South African friends some of the parties went well into the night, and, err, well into the next day.
Still out on the course are two boats and of course they are cranking along as best the can are my good friends on Godspeed doing a very respectable 5.6 knots with the wind on their port beam and Explorer doing an even more respectable 6.1 knots, but both boats have some tricky weather ahead. Remember that the competitors in the McIntyre Ocean Globe Race don’t get the same weather information as we do here watching the Yellow Brick (road) tracker. They both will be rolling into Cape Town to a hero’s welcome not long from now.
What else is there left so say? Oh, here’s one thing. The first leg of this grand adventure has been all we/you could have hoped for. You need some challenges to make it an adventure, from the North Atlantic that dished up some funky (another nautical term) weather that was all over the place, to letting that old guy (King Neptune) come on board to the South Atlantic which also dished up some strange weather and then there is the weather around Cape Town that everyone guessing what’s its going to serve up. Best wishes to Explorer and Godspeed as they make their way into Cape Town in time to enjoy everything that beautiful city has to offer.
