The last taste of dry land!

What am amazing week. Cape is a fantastic place and the culture is amazing! We arrived on Monday morning after a 10 and a half hour flight - pure hell! But managed to doze if not sleep through most it but suffered my first bit of travel sickness on landing! Much to Ron's distaste! Settled into our appartment and got our bearings around town with the Yacht Club and the V+A etc. Went in the cable car up table mountain, been in a million and twelve taxis and went an the most fab Safari ever! We saw Lions, Leopards, Cheetahs, Buffalo, Elephant, Giraffes, Zebras, Springboks, Warthog, Hippos, Crocodiles and we're treated like Queen's! Sharon is now my adoptive mother and will be introducing me to my new Dad, brother and sister in Australia when they are there to meet us - as long as she hasn't married me off to a randomly chosen, unsupecting young male!

I can't get over how fab teh weather has been! We went on a refresher morning on Quindao and had the maost amazing view of table mountain ever. Generally we've clear blue skies and gentle breeze which pics up in the late afternnon to early evening.

The forecast for the start of the race looks like we will beating mainly for the first few days and not turning east until later in the week. With this in mind I've been out today to buy sea-sick pills - but NOT the dreaded Stugeron which I am convinced actuly made me sick!  We're aiming to stay between the Indian Ocean High and the Southern Ocean depressions so that we get the benefits of both constant, steady weather and burst of fast sailing. The most common sail plan is probably going to be a poled-out headsail most of the way as it will be to windy for even the heavy weight spinnaker!

The start tomorrow promises to be an busy time! The boat still looks like bomb-site with kit all over the place and day-packs waiting to be stowed, and still more kit to come aboard! Not completely got my head round the storage system but should be fine once we get organised!

Feeling very nevous at the moment and I'm hoping that a good nights sleep will sort me out! At crew breifing they showed us some footage of the Hull and Humber man-over-board which stirred up a few people, me included! Although we spend so much time training and preparing for situations like that you never really expect to have to do it, and in such simple circumstances as that.

Now its time for my last night in a stable bed wide enough to stretch as wide as I like! I'l try and write as soon as I can and let you know how big the waves are! Keep your fingers crossed! x x x