Today, 4th Jan, we’ve been busy finalising our boat preparations ready for our early departure from Hobart tomorrow and our last leg of this race up to Airlie Beach which is 1,624 nautical miles away. We’re due on board at 7am which will be 8pm today in UK time. I love this disparity of time…it’s bonkers as Andie would say. We slip our lines at 8am and then it’s sails up and a parade of sail in the harbour (I’m not sure who’s going to be watching at that time in the morning here though). Each yacht will then undertake a few man overboard drills and then all 11 yachts will be lining up for a 11am race start, which will be midnight with you.

The arrival window in Airlie Beach is due to be between 13th and 15th January but of course this will be heavily influenced by the weather. Our perennial friend ‘the wind hole’ is due to make a few appearances on the way and we’ll be doing our best to miss out on a visit this time! We are due some heavy wind on the nose to start with and this will make life challenging on board for a period of time but the winds will lessen and that should make life a little more comfortable. I’ll try to take a few more photos on this leg of life below deck to give you all a better idea of how this looks. Here’s to a great race and hopefully a podium finish…fingers crossed!

And talking of photos I received this great photo of PSP from the media team today.