The Best of Camberley met up with Judy Campbell, who is John Fairley's better half and received this update on how John is progressing in The ARC Yacht Race from the Canaries to St Lucia where he is hoping to raise many thousands of pounds for Help4Heroes and in particular Headley Court rehabilitation centre. She said," I went down to Gran Canaria to see the crew off on 22 November – it was a spectacular sight, with over 200 boats making their way out of the marina with flags flying! Of course, Great Escape was proudly flying the Help for Heroes flag fore and aft (I’m getting the lingo these days!) and I waved them off with a bit of a lump in the throat, I must admit!
After a rough first night, it seems as if they’ve settled down to a routine of 3 hours on, 6 hours off watch, with a reasonable wind behind and sunny warm weather. They’ve seen lots of dolphins and flying fish, talking of which, great efforts have been made to catch something edible, with not much luck until yesterday, when they landed a 4kg dorade. So fish was finally on the menu! One of the comments on the blog which made me realise the scale of doing this, was when they had total cloud cover at night – it was completely black, no light at all, which must have been a little scary!! They think they will be reaching the halfway mark sometime today, so are making good progress, although a long way to go yet!"
John has already raised over £7,500 so far, which is brilliant, but every pound is vital to ensure the right level of treatment is maintained for our troops,who are injured during this and any other conflict.
Please visit www.thearc-h4h.co.uk. to follow the race and donate to the cause.
The race is due to finish around 14 Dec.
