15/10/11 - Lord Nelson

Day 6
Forward starboard came on watch at 08.00 to find that during the night the crew, including cooks and engineers, had tacked ship, wore ship, braced yards and tweaked every sail to get around several way points. At that time we were well ahead of 'the other ship’. At about 09.00 the enemy was spotted on the horizon just off Cowes. We proceeded to hand the Spanker before happy hour at that point the rugby semi-final match was 3-0 to Wales. During happy hour all the engineers had lost their way and ended up in the galley much to cookies delight as they then chopped vegetables, enough to last a week or two (conveniently seated to have a good view of the match on the T.V... A certain Scottish watch leader was given brasso duties which just happened to be in the galley, now that half the ships crew were in the galley the ones that were left had to clean the heads and scrub the decks. Whilst helming by the wind and pinching every inch we could get to stay on course which was proving very difficult, luckily the wind changed which meant we managed to stay on course for the finish line. At 11.15am we crossed the finishing line to a big cheer from all the crew gathered in the chart room, whilst the VHF radio was transmitting to Tenacious.
After that we handed most of the sails and put the engines on to make our way to our anchorage at Gunard Head past the Needles. Hands went aloft to do a harbour stow on the sails. Ken was in the galley cutting fruit along side his watch leader Marion to add to the engineers punch. At 1800hrs we all had sun downers on the bridge as we celebrated our victory, being 51.5 miles ahead although our Captain gave a 5 mile concession to Tenacious due to their inability to use some sails that were damaged. The day was ended with the crew celebrating our really exciting yet challenging voyage. Many thanks must go to Captain Barbara and her team.
Forward Starboard watch leader Marion, Margaret, Paul, Nick-Lily the Pink, Peter, Tony and Captain Ken