Chief seamstress Bernard saves the day again

Bernard Tissier repairing yet another sail.

What would JAMAICA do without Bernard Tissier ? Not a great deal if truth be told. Round the Worlder Bernard has taken it upon himself to repair the damaged sails and his work has been cut out during this race as Claire Maloney reports from on board JAMAICA :

This is the first time since race start day that we’ve taken down the kite and hoisted the white sails. Unfortunately, the sail in question had to be the windseeker!

We’ve now hit the large area of light and variable winds that the other boats reached yesterday. The one good thing about being behind everyone is that we had a few more hours of wind and managed to pull back a number of miles on the fleet while they bobbed about, turtle spotting (so I’m told). But we were always heading straight for the hole, and we’ve well and truly found it.

Not surprisingly really, as we’ve been heading steadily towards the equator, it’s starting to get a wee bit warmer. We started the race by snuggling into our Ocean Sleepwear sleeping bags on the off watches, just a nose peeping out, trying to keep warm. Most people progressed to lying on their fleecy inners, with the bag unzipped, and now it’s too hot even to do that. There is an international collection of fans dotted about the boat now. The originals were installed in the UK, but we have picked up others in Fremantle, Singapore, Santa Cruz.

It’s just as well we’re flying the windseeker at the moment, because poor old Bernard is in the saloon, sewing machine whirring, putting the finishing touches to yet another spinnaker repair. The little team of apprentices have made the job a lot quicker this time, and the boat being flat helps too, but it’s still a painstaking process. Until you’ve seen one of our spinnakers at first hand it’s difficult to appreciate just how much fabric there is. We’ve become very good at retrieving blown spinnakers (no wrap this time), and I’m sure Bernard could go into professional sail repair after this. Although, funnily enough, he doesn’t seem too keen.

As I look up, the speed as picked up to 3.0 knots. I’m trying to type fast as any moment now it could be back down to 0.0 knots. And, for the moment at least, the direction we’re heading isn’t too bad either.