At about midnight last night, Cardiff Clipper crossed its own outbound path from the UK, thereby completing a full circle around the Earth. More than crossing some random meridian, this felt like The Moment: circumnavigation.

 Eight of us – Mary, Tony, Lisa, Derek, Paddy, Becs, Nicky, and me – made it round. On the way we lost John Kelly and Phil McLaughlin to injury, and Ian Jeffers to the needs of his young family.  It would have been great to share the moment with them, but I am sure they will all sail again and hopefully we will sail some miles with them. We had a special circumnavigation tot of rum today in celebration. 

As it happens, the moment wasn’t that special: we were packing the 2.2oz spinnaker after a peel. Packing kites is not one of those “Isn’t round-the-world yachting a glamorous and exciting business?” aspects of sailing. Neither was the peel that preceded it. I fell off the pole.  This time, luckily, I had elected to wear a halyard and harness, because otherwise Fiona would think I was stupid.

Well, I’ve done peels loads of times but this time I just didn’t make it on to the pole. I don’t know what went wrong. Perhaps because the lines and pole were wet, perhaps the line holding me was overly taut, perhaps I had too much pud at dinner time. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t get a good grip. As I struggled I weakened, and finally lost my grasp, doing an upside-down screaming superman impersonation across the foredeck.

I didn’t hit anything, and they got me down safely. Needless to say, my caring crew nearly wet themselves laughing. 

Moving swiftly on…  Another significant and very happy milestone was my last Mother Watch, or at least my last full one. We shall have a full crew from Jersey to Liverpool for a three day trip, so we have decided to run half watches for Mothering. No more fourteen hour stints below decks. 

A-men. 

At least I finished on a good note: Tony and I produced a well-received Chicken Satay.  Sailing has been a little better. A day of windless bobbing (on my Mother Watch, thankfully) gave way to a spicier 20 knots yesterday. We jaunted through it nicely, with a small hiccup when the 2.2 suffered a (minor) tear on a hoist. It was quickly repaired. 

Now, however, we are back to the airless conditions that have plagued us for half the trip. Consequently, the race has been shortened again – I can’t be bothered to rant – so we are 200 miles (-ish) from the race finish, about 350 from Jersey.

In port this weekend I hope.