Send Hannah Sailing

This has been a pretty big race for us all - the first time we experienced the infamous Southern Ocean. We had been warned what to expect (strong winds and waves as big as houses) and this race certainly delivered!

The really noticeable thing about the Southern Ocean is the rate at which the wind changes speed - you can go from a flat calm to 40 knots (gale force) in the space of a minute. We change the sails to account for the different wind strengths - the stronger the wind the less sail we have up. When the wind changes so quickly it is very hard to keep up with the sails. A headsail change at best takes around 20 minutes and is a very physical and tiring task. For exaample most of the sails take at least 3 people to move them along the deck - imagine this with 20ft waves! When we suspect an increase (or decrease in wind) is coming we quite often get the next sail on deck and "hank it on" (clip it to the forestay) ready for the change.

We experienced our first 2 big depressions during this race - one with the wind directly behind us and one with the wind on the beam (our side). The record we saw on our navigation instruments was 59 knots of breeze (5 knots short of a hurricane) which happened when I was on the helm..... Awesome!

Unfortunately as we neared the end of the race we got stuck in a massive high pressure system which had a very bad effect on our position! We all found it quite difficult after the adrenaline fuelled weeks going through storms to deal with little issues such as running out of milk powder and worst of all CHOCOLATE! On the bright side though, the clearer weather meant that we had the most beautiful views of the stars at night. AT one point the water was so calm that the stars were reflected in the sea - not great for sailing but pretty special all the same.