It is hard to believe that tomorrow will be our last day of racing. The weather forecast calls for morning breeze from the east @ 10 knots changing to a 20 knot sea breeze in the afternoon. Hopefully, we will get in another four races before the sailing part of our adventure comes to an end.

We will have a presentation dinner tomorrow evening, so I will attempt to get off a short note between the end of racing and the beginning of dinner to let you know how our day goes.

Finally about 3PM the sea breeze fills in out of the south, and off the beach we go again. We manage to get in two races before the wind dies off for the evening. Tom skippered the second race, and manages to bring home our best finish to date. I've been telling him its just that he has a better crew than I do (so he doesn't get all swell headed on me) Quite honestly though, he has been sailing the boat better than I have.  His instincts seem to be a bit better than mine when it comes to picking which side of the course to sail, and his tiller hand seems to be a bit better. Mike and Nancy can be really quite proud of Tom, as am I.

Our over all position is improved to 22nd out of 28 boats. Not stellar by any stretch of the imagination, but in this group, I'm just glad not to be "Tail End Charlie".

After the racing we head over to the hotel for a quick shower and then back down to the Yacht Club for New Years Eve Dinner and drinks. Quite a crowd at Dinner this evening, and we enjoy the company of our Aussie hosts until about 11:30.

The conditions were very much more like the sailing we are accustomed to, with calmer winds and much flatter seas. I gotta tell you though, these Aussies are Good! We tightened up the diamond wires a bit today to eliminate mast bend and keep the boat powered up. Tomorrow we will probably rake the mast back a bit more. The Aussies sail the 18 a lot more like a 16 with the main sheeted in almost block to block even in the lighter winds we had today. Tomorrow should be interesting as the wind is supposed to lighten up even a bit more than today.

Race Two we got a fairly decent start, but were having trouble pointing with the rest of the fleet, and by the end of the race we only managed to stay ahead of one or two boats.

Race three we got an excellent start, but our pointing problems continued, and after blowing a tack @ the final rounding of A-Mark we still managed to only beat one or two boats.

Race Four we once again managed to pull off an excellent start, the wind had picked up a bit, and we were finally beginning to get the hang of sailing in these conditions. We Arrived at A-Mark in 6th position, managed a decent tack and were beginning to feel like maybe the day wasn't going to be a total loss when once again we just blew over. The wind conditions, combined with the steep chop is really quite challenging. Managed to turtle the boat and by the time we got back on our feet the whole fleet had passed us by. We decided after 5 hours of beating ourselves up that our fun cup was full, so we turned for the beach and called it a day, taking a DNS in the last race.

Today was the first time I have ever worn a Drysuit, and I have to say that I am really quite impressed with the Stolquist Drysuit. Never once during the entire day did I ever get chilled, and after 5 hours in the most strenuous conditions I have ever sailed in, and two capsizes, when I took the drysuit off, I was as dry as when we left the beach that morning. After we got back to the beach and took care of the boat, I just peeled it off, and went over to the Yacht Club for a cold beer. Makes me wonder why I didn't get one a long time ago.

Anyway, as you can well imagine, I am one whipped puppy this evening. But, if any of you are following the results on the internet, I figured you might be wondering what the heck happened, so, now you know. Tom and I are taking the positive attitude of being encouraged by our performance in the last race prior to our capsize and hoping for better results tomorrow.

Hope these notes from down under find all of you well and enjoying a Happy Holiday season.

On the flip side, after the first day of scheduled racking, we are Tied for Last Place.  The reality is that due to extreme weather conditions again today there was no racing.

We had a skippers meeting, or as they call it down here, the Competitors Briefing @ 10AM, Wind was steady @ around 28 Knots gusting to almost 40 Knots. The PRO lifted his glass of wine and wished everyone a great day being tourists, and invited us back @ 6 for the evening dinner party.

Tom and i took some time and visited the Maritime Museum, and wandered around town a bit. Melbourne is a very modern city mixed in with some very historic architecture. It really is an enjoyable place to be a tourist, really quite clean and the people are very friendly.

Not much more to really talk about, but wanted to let anyone that was interested why there were no results yet posted.

G'Day for now,

Monday Morning we hit the beach about 8:30AM with wind and wave conditions about the same as we had left them the night before, but both of us were eager to get out on the water so we suited up, raised the main and pushed off the beach.

I think the Aussies were a bit surprised to see us push off in those conditions. We were only out about 3 minutes and realized that three of our battens were coming out of the sail so we turned and headed back to the beach. Anyway, I’m sure we didn’t impress anyone, but we were the only boat that left the beach all day, so I guess that gives us bragging rights of some sort. By the time we got the battens secured, a 40 Knot squall had blown in so we decided to drop the mast and get in the line to have the boat weighed and measured so that we would be ready to race in the morning.

It was after 1pm when we finally got done with weigh in. The wind was gusting up to 52 Knots and the wave’s were up to 4 to 6 feet onshore, so once again, Tom and I decided to call it a day and hope for better conditions tomorrow. We are both quite disappointed as we had hoped to get in some practice together before the start of the event tomorrow.

The welcome dinner this evening was a very nice event at the Port Phillips Yacht Club Facility, they have a JumboTron mounted on the side of the building, and a couple of large flat panel monitors mounted inside the building for after event photos and video’s. And get this, one of the sponsors is Porsche, and all the beach tow vehicles are Brand New Porsche 4WD SUV’s.

The Forecast tomorrow is for 20 to 30 Knots with 15 to 20 knots for the rest of the week. So, hopefully we won’t spend the whole week survival sailing.

For now, I guess that’s all the news that’s fit to print, wish us luck tomorrow.