a-solitary-sea-rover:

Go Team TTOP!

Not having Martin is a big deal; he was basically their teacher and reliable voice of experience in the pit when they were a bunch of kids, some of them never really having gone offshore before. Now they’re going into what’s arguably the scariest leg of the race — down to the ice limit, across the Southern Ocean, and around Cape Horn — without their mentor.

They’re not the the same kids that started Leg 1. They’ve raced halfway around the world, including 6500 miles through the Southern Ocean from Cape Town to Melbourne back in Leg 3. But this is a little like the third act in a movie when the plucky heroes have to stand up and show what they’re made of.

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“It is with mixed emotions that sailors head back into the Southern Ocean. It is on the one hand a very special magical place. It can be great sailing with amazing sights. It can also be the scariest place on the planet where rescue is often not an option. We will pass point Nemo, the furthest point on the planet from civilisation, in fact the astronauts in the international space station are our closest humans.”

– Dee Caffari

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anonsally

replied to your

photoset

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Team SCA bow women Stacey Jackson, Liz Wardley,…

You’re making me nervous about this leg. But it sounds as if I *should* be nervous about it.

I’m probably guilty of over-hyping some aspects of it. They’ve already faced lots of bad weather and crossed oceans and were in the Southern Ocean (briefly) at the end of leg 1 and the start of leg 2. So this leg isn’t different in that sense.

These are all very experienced, very talented sailors, and even on SCA, where there are only a few who have done this specific race before, there are people (like Sam and Dee) who have sailed the Southern Ocean and rounded Cape Horn multiple times.

And they have strongly made, well-equipped boats that were specifically designed to hold up in these conditions, such that (hopefully) they’ll be better able to finish the leg without having to retire for repairs, as happened to all but one of the competitors on leg 5 in the 2011/12 race.

But yeah. It’s a wild, scary, beautiful place. There’s a reason why Antarctica was one of the last places on earth to be explored: because all the other places were easier to get to.

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