Blog Roxy

Sam Davies, Day 70 onboard ROXY

Hello everyone,

Yesterday has been a peaceful day onboard Roxy in the South Atlantic. With a light wind and a flat sea, the decks have remained dry and Roxy has been full main + solent for the first time in weeks! It is so nice to be able to go on deck without oilskins and boots, and to be able to move around without risk of being catapulted off balance.

I have managed to get some rest, to go through my check-list, and also do some maintenance and running repairs such as splicing work to repair my chaffed reef lines. Roxy has been drying out and so have my oilskins (at last).

I have also spent a fair amount of time working on weather files, none of which say the same thing. I have concluded that the next few days will be complicated, frustrating and a little slow. I need to cross my fingers, whistle for the wind and trust my feelings.

It has certainly not been a lonely day today, as I was relieved to hear from Dee Caffari, Cali (Arnaud Boissieres - by mail) and Brian Thompson (by phone) after their storm-running experience. I also had a chat to Steve White. The most extraordinary contact of the day though was an e-mail from "Leopard 3" - Mike Slade’s maxi - who is doing the Cape Town - Salvador race, and is crossing my path a few hundred miles to the North. Some of my good friends from The Solent are on board and it was great to hear their news, and read their hilarious "daily newspaper". It just goes to show that it is a small world sometimes (even if it does take three months for me to sail round it).

Roxy is now gliding along happily under the starry night and I'm going to get some "zeds" whilst the conditions allow.....

Sam x

Attack of the cling-ons !

Good morning everyone!

Well, yesterday evening was HARD work!

I was just thinking that now the upwind work has started, things will become quieter - I may even get bored. That was a mistake; just as I picked up my book ("Into the blue, boldly going where Captain Cook has gone before"), Roxy lurched and slowed instantly from 10 to 8 knots.

SO, I got out my endoscope to inspect what "cling-ons" we had picked up, and discovered that we had been attacked by a forest of GIANT kelp! I spent an hour doing back downs - after four years of Figaro sailing, I'm good at that - but to no avail. The kelp wrapped around the keel was probably as long as Roxy as the branches trailed beyond the transom. I managed to wrestle a bit of it off using my hands and the boathook - disgusting!

I then realised that I was potentially going to have to take an earlier bath than planned to free us from our "cling-ons". I stopped Roxy by dropping all the sails: this was the first time in two months of racing that Roxy has stopped. I anxiously waited to see if this would clear the kelp and had another look with the endoscope - YES! The forest was gone, thank goodness, which meant no swimming for me today. Phew!

However, the downside to this was the big wind to hoist the main back up. I made the most of it being down to check the top of the sail and battens, headboard and halyard lashings.

After a lot of exercise and 2 hours of down-time, I got Roxy up and running again. She is now kelp-free and 2 knots faster. I was so knackered that I managed to eat an 800 calorie meal, a bar of chocolate and drink pretty much an entire bottle of water!

This was essential as I still had a tack, including stacking of all the gear and sails, to do. After the tack I fell into a BIG sleep, with no alarms and just Roxy to wake me up. It was WONDERFUL!

Hopefully today I will not have so many adventures - in fact I am actually quite looking forward to being bored.

S x

Samantha's video blog

Roxy report of the Vende Globe 2008 - 2009. Onboard with Samantha Davies. more on www.roxysailing.com

Roxy Sailing - 3 de diciembre en la Vendée Globe

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Roxy vela y Samantha Davies cruzar el ecuador durante la Vendée Globe

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Day 15 onboard Roxy in the Vendée Globe - Sam Davies' daily log - Hitting the slopes, so to speak

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Now Roxy and I, like the rest of the fleet, are bouncing along upwind in the South Atlantic Ocean trade winds. Life is now all at a 30 degree angle, on port tack, meaning that my right leg will soon be longer than my left one. It is pretty bumpy too, which makes it feel like you are driving off-road 24 hours a day. Any movement requires care, and I have been likening this to my skiing trips in Avoriaz, when I frequently find myself prostrate across a steep incline! The top tip is to remember what Bruno says: "bend the knees", "stand across the slope" and "always keep the weight on the downhill ski". It seems to work here too!... more

Roxy Vela - Día 5 de la Vendée Globe con Samantha Davies

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Vendée Globe: a bordo con Samantha Davies

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El barco Roxy en la preparación para la Vendée Globe

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It is SO nice to have ROXY back in the water again!

I have been out sailing to tune up the rig and sails, and also we have been checking everything in these first few outings. There has been a host of “guests” on board with us, including: Francis from Hydroem, Philippe Roussel from nke, Tanguy (my coach), Titi (who is our faithful refit Mr fixit!), as well as the Roxy boys and myself.
 
The most important guest of the week though, was Roxy’s Dad: Michel Desjoyeaux, who came out kindly one evening to answer a few of our questions! <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Mich offered to come to Lorient, but instead we sailed over to Port La Foret one evening, and back again, arriving in Lorient at 1am. That gave me a nice opportunity to do a little night sail and test things like nav lights, etc! It was a beautiful evening, with full moon, 15 knots of wind and flat water so we hooned along happily!
 
We have also done some photos with our cool new spinnaker, so hopefully they will look nice. We put the Vendee Globe flags and logos on Roxy for the photos, and when I saw them that made my heart beat a little faster, as it was the first time that it really hit home that we are getting so near to the start of this big adventure!
 
Tomorrow (Sunday) I am off to my home – Portsmouth !! We will be moored in Haslar marina in Gosport for the week (when we’re not out sailing.) I’m even going to go back to my old school (yikes) on Tuesday morning for assembly (Portsmouth High).
 
Sam x