Just a quick message to everyone who's been following my sailing adventure - thanks for all your messages of support and encouragement.

I'm now sitting at the airport in Jamaica waiting for my flight.

Its hard to believe that the sailing is over. Time just seems to have gone by too quickly and the event that I waited for over a year to do...is done.

The fleet has sailed without me, now on their way to New York City.

Do I miss it? Yes.

But I comfort myself with the thought that I've had an amazing and fulfilling experience, both on the water and in our stopovers. The wildlife out at sea, the thrill of ocean racing, the Panama Canal transit, and Jamaica....wow.

Jamaica has been the highlight of my on-shore experiences. The friends I've made, the local cooking lessons, the music, and swimming with dolphins.

And with that in mind, I'm so very grateful. Grateful, excited and ready to move on to the next life dream experience - Cuba, here I come...!


Sent via BlackBerry from SingTel!

Its been a tortuous couple of days at sea.

As I write this, the boat is heeled over and I have my feet against the
wall to steady myself from falling right off the chair. We are
somewhere off the Coast of Jamaica and I cant begin to tell you how
excited, happy, relieved I am that by this time tomorrow, we will be in
the marina and the race will be over.

No sooner did we slip our lines in Panama, than my seasickness returned
with a vengeance. I have not been able to keep any food down since we
left. Definitely not what I had envisaged.

We have been beating upwind the entire time and will continue to do so
until early hours tomorrow when we do a short downwind stint into the
marina. Beating upwind means the boat is heeled over. This makes for
very rocky conditions above and below deck.

We have water washing over the deck constantly so no hatches are open.
This equates to the sweatbox being unbearable down below.....not to
mention that with all that water, its very damp. Not a fantastic
combination - wet, hot, damp & sweaty. I soooo want off this boat
tomorrow. I've decided that I enjoy downwind sailng a whole lot more.

Position wise - we are still in 1st place although we can see Cape
Breton and Hull & Humber stalking us in the distance. Its going to be a
close race!!

Deep down inside, I think I'm really from this part of the world. Its partly my name ("oooohhh Pele, like the soccer player from Brazil", they say) and then there's the other clues....

Like here in Panama, they eat cassava (they call it yuca), and a fried type bread called holajdres - very same same to the maori one.

Then there's the friendliness, and the mannerisims. Same same sense of humor to the pac islanders. Same same flora - bougainvillia, teuila, gardenias, mango trees, weeping willows, coconut palms...even the pool bar is thatched, just like a samoan fale.

Same same also for the people and how they operate. We went to the 'free trade zone' today - a mini city within Colon city (Colon named after christopher columbus) where businesses go to buy wholesale. Got asked for our passports for entry which of course we didn't have. 'No worries' says a tall local sporting a Gran Turismo badge (tour guide?), 'my wife works here'. We get ferreted down the hall, where we get a once-over by a stern looking woman then proceed to be escorted by our tourguide into the 'zone'.

Its clear we are out of element. For starters, kirsten sticks out like a sore thumb being blonde and from the UK. I could possibly have gotten away with it except I'm dressed like a geeky tourist. Our tourguide takes us through some chaotic streets and around a corner where we come across the 'retail' section for tourists. In the background there's a cruise liner parked up and plenty of locals + American tourists milling around. Its then that I see the security guards, all sharp in fatigues, official looking IDs....and guns. Yep, upon looking again, I confirm they're carrying guns...and I have a memory flashback to getting off a plane in fiji shortly after the coup when Chaudry was ousted and the airport crawling with armed military. Guns, and lots of 'em.

The trick I learnt then was to 'walk like you belong' so I did my best local impression and sauntered into the nearest store which turned out to be a full-on tourist store.... Never mind that we were being stalked by our uniformed tourguide who held kirsten's bags whilst she shopped up a storm. (Signage at the local supermarket entrance says 'no guns'...seriously)

We get a taxi back to the hotel after paying our stalker, I mean tourguide for his help. He selects a cab (obviously driven by his friend), says goodbye and leaves us to it. Our driver who introduces himself as 'Fox' drives like a crazy person through Colon - although it becomes obvious that everyone drives like a crazy person. We overtake vibrantly painted graffiti looking ex USA school buses which serve as local buses and all of are different designs. (So much like Samoan buses!). We see Colon as the city its described in guidebooks - derelict, run-down, full of poverty. We pass under power lines strewn with old sneakers and shoes. In NZ, that's the mark of a drug dealer's house...in LA apparently, they mark the lives of those shot down. I don't know what they mean here - must ask a local.

With apprehension we listen to Fox's questions typical of a cab driver 'where you from?', 'are you married?', followed by 'do you have a boyfriend,... why no? You too pretty, don't worry I find you nice Panamanian man to marry!!'. We finally get to our hotel, pay the fare and graciously take Fox's offered cell phone number ' u call me anytime!!'... say our 'muchas gracias' and goodbyes.

'GOODBYE LOVE!!' he sings out as he takes off down the drive.
We smile, and retreat indoors to some cool air conditioning.

Almost like home.
Sent via BlackBerry from SingTel!

Feel so lucky and blessed to be able to have this experience. Such an engineering feat!
Sent via BlackBerry from SingTel!

We are officially within sight of land after 3 weeks at sea. The rugged
lush green country of Panama awaits us as we continue to motor to our
marina. We should be arriving tomorrow morning - hurray!

Since we started motoring yesterday after crossing the finish line, the
only job to do is helming so we have all starting taking half hour
shifts to drive the boat.

Last night we had a movie night up on deck - Skip set up a laptop,
plugged the sound into the boat stereo, got the mothers to make popcorn
and we were in business. We took some cushions up from the saloon, took
our seats and watched 'The Hangover' under the starry sky. Waaaayyyy
much better than a drive-in, or cinema in the park. How many people can
say they've done that?

This morning we woke up to 'Land Ho!' as we cruised past the island of
Coiba. Then it was straight to work - all day we did our deep clean so
as to minimize time working on the boat at shore. We removed and
scrubbed all our floorboards and cleaned the bilges (underneath the
floorboards), checked all our rigging, scrubbed the deck, and did our
safety checks.

Tomorrow when we call into the marina, the only 2 jobs to do are
victualling (ie buying all the food for the next races) and checking the
mainsail. Then when Skip says its ok, we are outta there. Most of us
will check into hotels and go crazy with things like proper showers, air
conditioning, eating ourselves silly and sampling the local delicacies.

It is likely we will go through the canal on Friday and await the rest
of the fleet on the other side before we start the race to Jamaica.

I cant wait to sleep in a real bed tomorrow!!

ps. Before I forget, wildlife sightings worth mentioning - a manta ray
doing flips, a marlin doing belly flops and a shark.

We didn't get to party last night afterall.

Shortly after dinner, we got an email from Clipper HQ that the race had
been called short and a new finish line was issued. (this was done
because the fleet need to be in Panama on time to transit the canal and
the future weather predictions were all wind holes)....so karaoke got
cancelled as we got strict instructions from Skip to 'gun for the
finish' which was 150 miles away. With the new position of the finish
line, we now had 3 serious contenders for 1st place (besides us of
course!) - Qingdao, Jamaica and that pesky Team Finland who came out of
nowhere to emerge closer to the new finish line than we were!

So our night watch was not all karaoke fun and singing. We hit another
wind hole and it was hard going trying to get the boat moving in the
slightest bit of breeze. We even hoped for some squalls to get us
moving but even they didn't put in an appearance.

This morning we got to 8-9 knots of boat speed and then around 10am, the
wind died on us again. According to the latest fleet schedule, we are
closer to the finish than the other 3 boats, however the winner will be
whoever gets the wind first. It really is a tooth & nail fight to the
end as our Skip put it.

Once we have crossed the finish line (hopefully sometime tomorrow), we
will be motoring the rest of the way to Panama which is some 2 days so
its possible we will be setting foot on dry land on Monday!! We are
practically salivating at the thought of cold showers, air conditioning
and ice cold cold cerveza (beer).

Go Spirit of Australia, Go!