SAILING VOLVO OCEAN RACE: Week SixJustin Slattery on the Green Dragon's dilemma: divert to the scoring gate or straighter run to finish
WE'RE CHARGING along right now in around 25 knots of breeze, but on this leg we're literally sailing into the unknown. The race has never travelled to India before, and already the run to Cochin has thrown up a few challenges.
There's a scoring gate around a thousand miles away which is not on the most direct route to the finish. We've had to decide whether to go further south into the stronger wind to pick up as many points as possible at the gate or stay north in potentially lighter conditions for a straighter run to the finish.
The result is the fleet of eight yachts has pretty much spread out, with most of us edging south and the two Telefonica yachts opting for the north. We're positioned in the middle right now so we'll have to wait and see who's played the best game.
It was a fast start from Cape Town and we flew off the line in third place - only to sail into a windless hole where we all pretty much parked up and the race restarted again.
That's so typical of the wind patterns in the shadow of the magnificent Table Mountain. It was great to see so many spectator boats out on the water, although some of them did get a little too excited and got a little too close for comfort as they tried to get in on the action.
It's always hard to leave Cape Town, as it's one of my favourite stopovers. I met lots of Irish supporters there and there was a huge turnout to wave us off the dock. I'm already missing the great South African food as the reality sinks in that it's only freeze-dried on the menu for the next couple of weeks.
The Dragon's in pretty good shape, but we had to work into the early hours to get her ready for the start line on Saturday. We went for what we call a shake down sail on Thursday, where we check everything is working and there are no problems with the repairs or modifications we've made.
It was pretty wild, about 30 knots, and a sail fitting broke (the J4 lock strop), bringing the halyard crashing down, smashing a spreader on the mast. We had to get a new spreader flown in from the Netherlands, which didn't arrive until midnight on Friday.
We're just glad that it happened in Cape Town rather than at sea, as it would've probably cost us the leg.
It was good to catch up with the other crews during the stopover. When we're racing we're given position reports on the other yachts every three hours, but we're not allowed to know any other information about what's happening on board.
It seems both Telefonica boats had the roughest time on the last leg with breakages, but most of the boats had a few issues.
When you're out on the water and so isolated you often feel like you're the only team with problems, so it's quite reassuring to see that everyone is facing similar setbacks.
It was great to see my friend and former crewmate Tony Mutter looking well. He had to be taken off Ericsson 4 at the Cape Verde Islands after he suffered a skin infection in his knee, which looked pretty serious, but he's back on board now.
There are 4,500 miles to India but, with so much uncertainty around the leg, nobody can accurately predict how long it's going to take us - anything from 16 to 22 days. It'll be strange not sailing the usual route through the Southern Ocean, dodging the icebergs, to Australia, and in some ways I think I'll miss that.
However, it'll be intriguing to see how this new route pans out.
