Yellowknife has always had permenant snow by Halloween and we had it but it melted. The spook night draws closer and still the white stuff is absent. I am not complaining as there are a few days left.  Green Halloweens here have come very close but the snow has always arrived sometimes even on the day of but it was here. I have seen kids trick or treating here in -20 with howling winds, surprising they could even find the trail to your door. We will know soon enough.

Just waiting for the 3rd. leg of the Clipper race to fire up over 50,000 virtual racers now. This leg we sail from Rio De Janeiro to Cape Town and winds here can be good. There is the dreaded South Atlantic high to watch out for as this can slow you down and can last for days. I am waiting for the briefing to see if there are icegates or buoys that we need to round. Icegates were installed on the Vendee and Volvo races to keep the fleet North of the drifting icepacks.  The iceburgs from the Antarctica shelf are drifting further north lately and create a great hazard to a racing sailboat. You can imagine what your boat would look like if you hit a big one but the small ones( growlers) that are impossible to see cause the greatest risk.

Ice gates are a set of co-ordinates that the boats must pass in one of three ways. You can stay north and pass with them on your starboard side, you can sail between them entering from either north or south of the gate or you can sail up through them from the south turn and drop back down again. At one point your starboard side must pass the imaginary line between the markers. In circumnavigating the further south you go the shorter your sailing distance but the trade off is the weather as it gets worse the further south you go. Deep down in the southern ocean there is no land mass to brake the wind and they roar around the globe pretty much undisturbed. This makes for fast but dangerous sailing.

I just recieved the race briefing and there are no ice gates or markers  to clear and we have free riegn on our sail plans. The gun goes off tomorrow at 18:00 GMT+1 and the distance is 3,400 nautical miles roughly 3 weeks of sailing. Looking forward to hooking up with the crew of virtaul party animals from Rio . They are much quieter at sea.