14 Feb 2008

The atmosphere that awaits the Angels is one of excitement, awe and love!
Its a picture perfect day (lucky as its been off and on over the last couple of days here! The Angels must have pulled in some favours with the Big One!) News has spread across the island of the girls arrival and a nice size crowd is starting to form in the harbour...family, old friends and new, are all waiting with anticipation and craning necks to get the first sight of the girls as they turn into the harbour...

But let's back track a bit... apologies for the length of time since the last update - the land crew have been busy preparing for their arrival over the last few weeks - this in itself has been quite a challenge as working out their exact arrival date has been difficult as in recent weeks the Angels have proven to us that they really can fly! Since about week 6 they really picked up the pace covering about 1/3 more miles each day then they had in the first half of the race! Suddenly a force to be reckoned with, they pulled themselves right back into the race cathcing up and overtaking the boats in the pack in front of them- the little devils! Day after day and week after week they have kept up this incredible pace - however not without incident....

The daily trials and tribulations of ocean rowing life threw the girls a new set of issues to deal with - their seats! Their seats - which are meant to slide back and forth along rails to aid the momentum of the rowing - have had to be repaired time and time again but finally decided to pack up about 10 days ago, meaing the seats are now stuck firm and rowing has become a back breaking excercise as the girls have to bend and pull the entire length of each stroke...All of this extra effort and yet the girls have been on about 1/4 of their usual food rations since their food got ruined when the boat leaked. The weather too has seen the boat nearly capsized - during which they lost a lot more equipment...but they could smell the land (and no doubt taste the rum punch!) and have kept on rowing...

The next time you read these pages the words will be coming from the Angels themselves...thank you for your continual support and interest - I am off now to go put the Champagne on ice!