There are some days in your life when you think (and I’m sure you’ve been here)…..do you know what……I’m just going to pack it all in and……..

Today started at 6.30am with a drive over to Suffolk to attend a client’s funeral. Roger, a really lovely man and client for over 10 years, died recently after a short struggle with cancer. He was 57 (the same age as me). Afterwards it was a visit to a care home to visit some clients who had some trust paperwork for me to pick up. Now if ever you want to think about getting on with you life, just visit a local care home. And my clients are in separate rooms too! My final visit of the day….another care home to say hello to a client whose birthday it was recently. I couldn’t catch up with him as, only this morning, he had been rushed into hospital for an operation. As Andie would say…..oh lordie!

So my recommendation to you, dear reader is this. Work out what you want to do with your life, work out if you can afford it and if you can, do it. And if you don’t think you can afford it, find someone to help you make it possible. Life is all about ‘Chasing your Albatross’ and whatever your Albatross is, my advice to you is this…make it happen because one day you might not be able to and none of us know when that day might come knocking.

Anyway on a more positive, because I need a more positive end to today, I’m pleased to see that PSP are still hanging in there and, whilst they are having to deal with light winds, they are still leading the fleet. With the 3 leading boats all in the same weather system I’m sure they’ll be trying as hard as they can to make use of every breath of air. Sails will be up and down and being changed regularly to make the most of any opportunity. On board the crews will have a constant eye on the horizon to see if they can……a) spot the opposition and if they can then….b) to see if they are doing anything different to give them an advantage.

It happened with us in the Southern Ocean between Cape Town and Australia. A few days out from Fremantle the Qingdao boat appeared on the horizon. We were bobbing around without any wind. The sea was mirror flat without a ripple. Somehow Qingdao had wind and over the course of 24 hours they caught us up, gybed behind us and overtook us. I can tell you that was a very frustrating feeling…to put it mildly. Matt was watching them constantly through his telescope to check on their sail plan but it would have made no difference…they had wind and we didn’t. Simple. The really frustrating thing is you can have two boats reasonably close together and even though one has wind it doesn’t follow that the other one will too.

So Matt and the crew will be trying everything they can to keep their advantage. As I write they are 27 miles ahead of Qingdao which is an improvement on yesterday evening’s position. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that the team can bring their Albatross home….now that’s not too much to wish for is it??

Dear Wind Gods……….