Time and tide wait for no man

Time and tide wait for no man. These words are in the front of out minds as we kill time at the entrance to whitehaven harbour waiting for enough tide to allow us to reach whitehaven's sea lock. There are 4 or 5 other boats out here too. None have been able to get into whitehaven yet.
The race will start again in whitehaven but now it is a running race. There will be maybe 5 teams starting at the same time on the scafell pike leg. This will provide a good race on the hill. Out overriding concern is to get back to whitehaven while there is still enough water in the harbour on the falling tide. Realistically this means we have 7h30m to get up and down. We are confident we can do this if we run well. We thought we had managed to pull this trick 2 years ago but we grounded in the outer harbour. This year we intend for things to be different.
We have had a good sail over from caernarfon. There has been enough wind to keep up 6 or more knots on a close reach. Eads innovation works has been sailing beautifully. She is a small boat but a real gem. Piers and gary have been doing a long stint on deck helming and pulling strings. Geoff has now taken over in the small hours. I can here the round of the anchor being prepared so we must be right by whitehaven harbour.
eads innovation works is an x99 yacht. On paper the other yachts in the leading groups should be quicker than us. We do have several advantages. We have a relatively shallow draught: we can get in and out of harbours at more states of the tide. We are light and easier to row. Maybe these attributes can keep us ahead if we are able to get out of whitehaven on the same tide and others can't. If we do manage to pull this trick we know that the rest of the fleet will hunt us down mercilessly.
We have one more hour's sleep before the fun begins!