12/10/11 - Lord Nelson

Day 3
Forward Starboard were on 8pm till midnight watch and were kept on duty to help hand the Main Course. We finally got to bed about 1am. After a brief morning meeting we tacked the ship with all hands on deck followed by a talk from the Captain on what we had done and why.
This was followed by happy hour for us below decks scrubbing the companion way and cleaning the heads to keep our ship clean and tidy. Facing the challenging wind we missed one way point but clawed back the mileage with a back up plan to pass the next one (E1). While on the afternoon watch we spotted Tenacious on the horizon holding a parallel course. 2nd mate Jon calculated that we would cover 27.5 more miles than them as they had just crossed the finish line and were heading west under engine power. We managed to pull one more way point, tacked the ship for the third time, then crossed our finish line at 1703 hrs to a big cheer from the whole crew. At 2000 we handed all sails and braced the yards to slow us down for a comfortable cruise to Cherbourg in the morning.
Forward Starboard Marion (WL) Nick, Margaret, Paul, Peter, Ken and Tony.