Friday, July 15, 2016

Going where the wind takes us

Howdy land lubbers! Shadowside here with another report from day 4? of he race. Time tends to meld together out here in the open ocean. Between watch schedules, sail changes, and the incredibly hard task of making scrambled eggs in a rolling sea, one tends to forget the day. We are currently N32.09 W131.06 course over ground 225 drifting along at a measly 4.6 knots. The wind has shifted to the aft of and we are waiting for watch shift to set up a whisker pole so we can fly wing and wing. The weather and sea conditions have been favorable, although we are all still dawning our foulies. We can feel the warmer weather approaching, and Ill be able to put away all of my Patagucci technical warm clothing. The night sky is overcast so there are no stars or moon to speak of. Just the black black horizon. George, or "Jorge" as we also affectionately call him, because not only do sailors give their self steering gear names, we also give them nicknames. Jorge has been doing less steering downwind and the actual humans onboard have been hand steering. Its quite a strange feeling driving a sailboat through the dark black ocean.
The crew remain in good heath and spirits. We have been eating well and getting enough sleep with our 4 hours on/4 hours off watch schedule. We are currently last in our division BUT that has not dampened our fighting spirit! We are the bad news bears of the race, the mighty ducks of the Pac Cup!! The era of the ketch is not over.

Hope all is well and good out there on dry land. Until next time. Same bat channel time same bat channel.

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