PERHAM ON THE HOME STRETCH

Brit sailor Mike Perham has finally hit the home stretch and is expected home at the weekend. After a prolonged and problem littered voyage it must be a relief for the 17 year old to finally see his dream about to materialize as he takes the record for youngest ever circumnavigator of Zak Sunderland, who has only held the title a matter of weeks.

'Well, there was some fun surfing last night, that's for sure! This 'Bad Boy Low', as it's now been christened, certainly did what it said on the tin. Totallymoney.com was really zipping along at times, surfing down some totally huge swells, the biggest of which were over 45 feet!” said Mike in his blog, “But this morning I did something I've never done this trip yet. I actually put on the 'brakes'. I reduced sail considerably and slowed from 11knots to nine. We've decided that it'd be better if I'm not too close to the shore when Hurricane Bill hits. I'm much happier out here with lots of sea room, so I can just let Bill pass overhead; it's much better to be in a ding-dong away from the coast. The other reason for my slowing is that I've made such good progress across the North Atlantic, that I'm almost a day ahead of my scheduled arrival!

“Having said that, despite the reduced sail, Totallymoney.com is still surfing along quite merrily with only a handkerchief up.” He added, “The downside of not being so powered up is that the boat's movement has significantly changed, I'm rocking and rolling about a lot more. To help deal with this, and to keep a reasonable distance from Bill, I'm intentionally sailing into a ridge of high pressure, so the wind is going to drop off much more, which will be nice as I haven't had a day of light-ish conditions for quite a long time.”

All being well Mike expects to cross the finishing line of Thursday and arrive in Portsmouth on Saturday

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