Anton and Colin are now on Scafell somewhere, having got into Whitehaven before midnight. Anton said it would take at least 10 hours in the dark, so we shouldn’t expect them back until 10am at the earliest.

Kate Hattersley is one of the sailors on Kithros II this year, and has been keeping her husband Andrew up to date on the sailing side of the mission. Andrew has emailed me a sailing update from the first two legs – really interesting to get the sailing perspective on this adventure!

“Great sailing so far! First leg was tough sailing with winds force 5-6 with occasional stronger gusts.  Took a course close in to the shore aiming to get out of the tidal race but not hit the inhospitable rocks.  An involuntary gybe saw a shackle shear and Bill needed all his engineering skills to rig a jury rigged pulley while this was mended.  They managed to get in over Caernarvon bar in the dark in a very creditable 11th -12th so around halfway despite being the smallest boat in the fleet except for Team Sanoodi who were a very long way last.
Sunday saw sun and a pleasant force 4 with gusts of 5 – hugging the bank they managed to avoid the worst of the tide and kept sailing throughout the Menai straits unlike the leaders who at times were stationary for 30-90 minutes.  They were having a close battle with Pagets lady and pulled out when Kithros flew their big spinnaker but PL had taken theirs down – however Kithros then blew out their spinnaker and PL caught up again so for the last 3 miles they put up their smaller spinnaker.  They were delighted to get into Whitehaven at around 1130 – 2.5 hours ahead of Bill’s most optimistic prediction and only 6 hours behind the leaders and around 4 hours behind Neil and team in RBS Adventure Quest.  The sailors for the second time had the luxury of a nights sleep while the runners have another  night cycle / run for the runners which was tough.   “Lovin it!” says Kate”