Crew Blog

California or Bust

10 April 2008

Day 5 of Race 8, Honolulu to Santa Cruz, finds Nova Scotia some 1,400 nm from the California coast in 5th place, sailing along at a respectable 9 to 10 knots under a Force 5 south-easterly breeze.

As much of the race so far has been close-hauled sailing, the conditions onboard have been uncomfortable, rough and wet. The conditions have improved somewhat, but it seems with every race (Fremantle, Qingdao, Hawaii) we are always “taking it on the nose.” So much for down-wind sailing! But the stalwart crew of Nova Scotia takes it on the chin as always and keeps on going in good spirits. We look forward to some good down-wind sailing down the coast of Mexico on Race 9. Meantime, we try to stay focused to maybe achieving a podium finish and ensuring everyone gets to California safely.

As has often been written before, mother watch is never easy under any kind of rough weather, but when you combine this with the excessive angles of heel associated with close-haul sailing, MW becomes very hard. Today the Mother of All Mothers (Paul) and Kiwi Mother (Andrew) are really up against it because it was decided to bring boat time forward by 3 hours (to match Pacific Daylight time) in one day! This means that our workday is accelerated, with reduced time for meal preparation and some rest, and some of those extra fun mother jobs, like pumping bilges. But, hey, these mothers are a good team. We can take on any challenge thrown at us.

Roll on California!

Paul & Andy