B&Q passes southern tip of Vietnam

by Team Ellen on 7 May 2006 It has been another shifty night onboard with conditions dropping as low as two knots, B&Q has passed the southern tip of the Vietnamese coast and they are now sailing across the Gulf of Thailand....

'Had a fairly light airs night and morning and we are now down to 2 knots of wind, and even that couldn't decide where it was coming from. The only thing to do in those conditions - try to keep the boat pointing in one direction, limit rudder movement and gradually let the speed build. This technique paid off for us as the breeze started to fill in again and pretty soon we were off with a Code 0 and Full Main at 14knots. But before long the wind started to head us so we are back on Genoa and 10-knots of speed 7-knots of wind in the direction we want to go. We really want to make it across our Thailand finish line, when that will be exactly is any ones guess this wind could die completely again tonight or we could be lucky and carry it along all the way to the line, which is currently under 180nm away. After that it’s straight onto the shortest leg on the whole ARC - a fantastic sprint leg from the Thai/Malay border town of Tumpai, down the beach coastline to Terengganu. Before all of that though we have to sail past the Bunga Kekwa Field and Bunga Raya Field, two oil fields that are located on our direct route. South of our course will be a massive oil and gas field, it's strange not to have associated this area with oil and gas before, but there are so many good reserves here.

'Sailing in these conditions has been really fantastic - and such a contrast to our earlier sailing the first leg from Yokohama to Cheju island. It was so windy and rough, it's hard to remember just what the motion was like when we have spent 6 days with not a wave over the boat, and not a foul-weather jacket on deck, we are very fast over this flat sea, it's so rare to sail in such flat water certainly for such a long way. As soon as the wind gets to as little as 7 knots we are flying.

'Tomma has said he can't remember going so slowly on a multihull for so long and that's a pretty good resume of our trip. But when you look back the wind-speeds they have been so low, rarely staggering above 10knots of wind, and even so we have managed to keep a very respectable average speed all things considered and in the light airs it has been 8 knots up to now. Looking back on Maxsea we have in fact covered more miles than expected, as the upwind leg to Sanya added quite a few, also on Maxsea is the entire path of our sailing out here!! We are currently 2100nm from Dalian, northern Mainland China as the crow flies; it's all gone so fast it's been incredible.

'The food crisis has been halted for a few hours at least with a rare find in the back of the boat - a box of Dove chocolates - that seem to be quite durable in the heat, and a packet of skittles! To be quite honest the food crisis is in fact a 'treats' crisis as we have loads of freeze-dried food. And talking of the Dove chocolates they are individually wrapped, with a motto on the inside mine was; REMEMBER YOUR FIRST EVERTHING. It seems like good advice, there have been a few firsts (and lasts on this trip) and I’m certain the Chinese jelly fish falls into that category!!

'Bye, bye from the good ship B&Q – we are now smoking along at 12 knots - with WE WILL ROCK YOU belting out of the speakers!!!!'