We have had an excellent sail down from Bergen. A fair wind the whole way and good sailing speed to boot. Yarns and laughter coming up from the sidedeck on the night watches. The jib sheets on the big jib made matchwood of first the port navigation lights and then the starboard ones when they got caught underneath, so that was our phone and navtex! We have had to run the engine the whole way down to charge the batteries as the genny is still on the blink. The prop shaft is locked off though so its just noise and not drive that we get! As we neared the finish line the wind dropped and backed so we were dredding being hard on the wind and not being able to lie the turning mark. We were lying third and wanted to hold on to our position. As we were racing against boats in our class that were 140 feet long we felt we were doing pretty good! Atlantica was leading our class with Athene second. The wind held and we rounded the mark, the West Horns Rev Cardinal. 16 miles to go to the finish. Everyone was up on deck as we crossed the line, pitch black, as it was 4 in the morning. Loud cheers in the darkness, a champagne bottle was handed to Ben, our youngest crewman, to pop! Then to work to get sails down and motor into Esbjerg as the finish line was 22 miles from the port. The land is very low lying. We are only 10 miles from it but we could still be away out at sea. The next position report puts us down to 4th. There are still a lot of boats at sea and the final positions won't be known until everyone is in. A "Follow me" boat comes out to guide us in and show us where to berth. It is a rickity old pier at an iceplant with not much in the way of fendering. Pauline gets bacon sandwiches dished up and mugs of hot tea. Ahh,that woman! Brian is a lucky man! Because of the fair wind the fleet has arrived 2 days before expected and things ashore haven't been set up in full. Come Saturday it will all be different and the place will be alive and jumpin'! The weather is hot and sunny.