10-16 Oct

Well, the boat has now finally been shipped - and it looks as though we’re really doing this thing! More and more things keep happening to make the race seem more real - this week we also got sent an itinerary for our 2 weeks in La Gomera, preparing for the start. You’ll be happy to know that along with briefings on safety at sea, and proper port etiquette, there is also some (actually quite a bit) of time set aside for good old fashioned partying!

It’s one of the nice aspects of this race, that people do genuinely seem to get along, which means I’m really looking forward to the time I spend in the Canaries. True, once I get on the water then every other boat will be the oppo, there to be defeated at all costs, but before that (and hopefully afterwards!) they’re a great bunch of people from all walks of life.

So, the boat has gone, which is a great relief after the manic efforts of the last couple of weeks. We drove it up to Newark on its trailer on Monday morning, to the shipping agents, who put it on a custom-built cradle on top of a wheeled skid, and rolled it into a standard shipping container. Two boats go in each container, which meant that the shipper was a little dismayed to see we had pointy outriggers - but I’m told he managed to get them both in okay! It will now be shipped to Tenerife where it will clear Spanish customs, then onto La Gomera, where it will be put in the marina ready for us to turn up and get in it!

In the meantime we’ve turned back to gym work, for what else is there to do? Having spent some seriously long periods in the boat, it seemed sensible to do some stupidly long pieces on the erg as well - but for some reason these just seem to hurt more. This Saturday I did 5½ hours, with 7-8 minute breaks every hour or so. That hurt quite a bit, and it was interesting (although painful) to see how my performance deteriorated over the course of it. More information to go into the memory, all hopefully giving us a better chance of performing well in the race.