Bouncing our way back home.

After arriving into Den Helder late at night we spent the next few hours being given a great welcome; we were presented with our own clogs and I tried some local Herring? 

The next day I went with some friends by train to Amsterdam and spent the night there. I visited Dam square, walked along the canals, visited the Rembrandt House museum and went on a canal cruise. It was nice having two days to relax and see the sights of a city which has a lot to do with history of art. We then went back to Den Helder on the train to do some work on the boats the next day. We finished the deep cleaning and other little jobs and had a big clean out of things we didn't need; when we arrive into Gosport there will be a lot of work to do on the boat.

So today it has been back to the race, all the Round the World crew had their photo taken with Sir Robin Knox-Johnston and then we set off at lunch time. Initially we were in light winds and it was going to be a kite hoist start; strangely the last time we had one of these was when we left Southend on our first ever race, how times have changed! Unfortunately as the countdown ended we found ourselves pointing the wrong way and unable to turn around as the wind had died on us and everyone else made off at good speed. Eventually we turned round, but were well behind. Over the next hour we slowly crawled our way up the fleet and an embarrassing start had been overcome and we found ourselves in 2nd place! All was going well, the wind was building and we were flying along! But then suddenly there was a bang and the kite ripped all the way from the top to the bottom... it was none other than Bruce, our lightweight kite, we did a record recovery, which a few other boats commented on over VHF! and within minutes Bruce was out of the water and Bwian our medium weight kite was up, we had lost a couple of places but the team did a great job! Now Bwian is back down, the Yankee 2 and Staysail are up and we are bouncing over large waves toward Southend...... Not long now.