The VOR yacht Black Pearl arrived in Cape Town on 27 November after an uneventful flight on the Antonov 124. She was then transported to Pirate City, in the harbour area, which will be our base of operations for the next four weeks.

The shore team is arriving in Cape Town this week after getting a well-deserved week off. Basically they had gone hard since early August without a break. The crew is taking this week off and will arrive in Cape Town 7 December. The goals of this week are for the shore team to install the new wedges and bomber doors for the keel and finish up a few other jobs on the boat. The plan is to be sailing by the 10 December and then go offshore on the 12 for a few days of ocean sailing and sea trialling to make sure all is well with the repairs. Leg 2 will be one of the most demanding of the race for both the boat and the crew physically. I don’t think either can possibly be over prepared so I think we are using our bit of bad luck on Leg 1 to gain a leg up on Leg 2.

After we return, we will then have two events on the 16-17 December. On the 16 we will have a presentation of the team and the boat to 1,000 school children of Cape Town. On the 17 we have a corporate sailing day for Disney.

The next race for us is the in port Race on 26 December. Obviously, we will be looking to get some good scores in the next few races to try to recover what we lost on leg one. As I said before, this is a long event and there may be other breakdowns.