Went out yesterday and watched the Volvo Ocean Race in-port race.

When we got out on the water the wind was blowing 20-25 knots, and by the time the race started it was a steady 30 knots with gusts up to 35. Not ideal conditions in which to watch a boat race, but fantastic if you wanted to see just how fast a Volvo Open 70 could go!

And did they go! Especially ABN-Amro 1, who took out over 7 minutes on the rest of the fleet by the end. Watching the boats round the windward mark was quite spectacular as they accelerated when they caught the breeze from behind. And then when they got their kites up they just took off completely. Apparently they were getting 30 knots peak speed.

Flying a bag in 35 knots of wind and then having to gybe at some point, with a canting keel, was not going to be an easy task, and most of the fleet managed to broach at least once. Pirates of the Carribean enjoyed it so much they broached on all 3 laps, the final broach dropping them from 2nd to 5th place. ABN-Amro 2 also got into trouble on the first lap and managed to do some dredging with their keel near Blouberg, before recovering and going into a broach. I can’t wait to see all the action on TV. From our vantage point near the windward mark all we could see was spinakers flailing in all directions. The juicy details can be read at the race website.

Almost the end of December and its been really hectic round here. Done some cycling, but not nearly enough, and abandoned the last league event on 16 December.

The reason for the lack of time has been a rather disorganised office move. We planned to move at the beginning of December but Telkom decided that the soonest they could install ADSL was February (!). So all our furniture moved, but we couldn’t move ourselves into the office because we wouldn’t have been able to do any work.

So everybody was working from home. I had the server under the kitchen counter, and the laptop and another PC on top of it. Not a very tidy kitchen.

Luckily DT managed to get hold of a “contact” at Telkom who arranged our ADSL to be installed on 12 December. So we could all move in. But then there was a huge workload because of all the disorganisation created by working from home.

My lack of riding caught up with me today. I’ve hardly ridden the whole week and even riding with Tony yesterday I was feeling really groggy.

So today at the foot of Hels, Tiaan Kannemeyer puts in a huge attack and the bunch shatters. I went flying out the back. Even with my HR up at 98% I wasn’t even close. Very depressing , but I suppose I can’t expect to keep up in a race if I haven’t been training. (note to self: start training again)

I was planning to write a nice detailed description of the race, but have just been so hectic with moving offices.

So, in short, we were aiming for around 6 hours, and we managed 6:00:40, which we were very pleased with. That got us 8th position overall.

We started with 10 riders and managed to keep 6 together till the end. I was off the back at one stage, but managed to get back to the front 6 just before the main climb of the day. Then we lost someone else on that climb and so I was part of the final 6. Once the climb was done I was feeling pretty strong and I managed the last 40kms just fine. I was rather surprised considering how little riding I’ve been doing.