Cape to Rio is GO!

I have made little mention of participation the Cape to Rio Yacht race, party because it was a bit of a shot in the dark like the Dakar. It came up as an option for my adventure a while ago while talking to Sarel, a friend from VYC. The yacht he sails on, Ocean Cruiser (OC), is taking part in the race. I went to sail with him on this yacht in the hope of getting a spot on either OC or another. Unfortunately this particular yacht’s crew had been finalised. For me to be able to get a spot on a team I knew that any skipper would at least want to know about me. The best way was to continue sailing on OC. A couple of weeks passed, during which I submitted my sailing CV to the Cape to Rio organisers and asked around the club, in the hope of finding a crew to sail with. By this time I wasn’t very hopeful as most teams had been finalised. As with the Dakar, this too I had left this to late.

In order to keep my options open, I contacted Sarel (who works for a boat building company in Cape Town) to as about the option to deliver a yacht to the Caribbean. Once again sent my sailing CV. Time ticked away and I was thinking that I would end up flying to Buenos Aires, as originally planned.

Out of the blue one morning, I got a call from Dale (the owner & skipper of OC). One of his crew had to pull out of the race at the last minute…”are you still interested in doing the Rio race?” Keeping calm was my main priority at this point. That afternoon we had a chat, just to suss each other out. We were both happy that we would be able to sail together and so my position on the crew was secured!

Since then we have been preparing the boat. For the most part she is ready to sail, but some minor maintenance/repairs were needed. This includes servicing winches, measuring sails, getting the gas working, fine tuning of the rig and cleaning the boat out.

As we have received some sponsorship, a promotional brochure was put together. We have been sponsored a satellite communication and a blog has been set up for OC during the race. Unfortunately I will not be updating my blog during this time, as the satellite bandwidth is INCREDIBLY expensive. But go have a look at www.xtra-linkcapetoriorace.blogspot.com to keep up to date with what is happening on OC. There will be a link on the official race website to show the position of each boat during the race. I’ll post this link just before the race starts.