Hello everyone,
Another stop ticked off in our world adventures. Seattle was a good break for us all after a long and tiring North Pacific crossing.
The departure out of Seattle was really enjoyable, with the fire rescue vessel giving us a nice farewell with an impressive water display that we used as a turning point for our Parade of Sail. Once that was complete, we had a long but enjoyable motor out of Seattle. Besides the weather being very clear and sunny, the scenery around this area is worth enjoying especially the nearby mountains with snow still visible on top. The long motor gave us a chance to make sure the boat and crew are 100% ready for the upcoming race and do some refresher training with the new crew before another Le Mans start, run by a Lead Skipper lining up all boats in the fleet to start together.
We are already 24 hours and around 240 nautical miles into Race 11 down to Panama, but with all boats within 20 nautical miles of each other. We have had some good reaching and now upwind conditions as a ridge passes over but hopefully during the night tonight the winds will go more from behind us giving us nice downwind conditions for the next few days and even all the way as far as the Ocean Sprint.
We could certainly see a split in the fleet with some boats going for the Scoring Gate and good wind angles whilst others go for the more direct route with some favourable currents along the coast, time will tell who does what!
Otherwise, crew are finding their feet again with a few new joiners feeling the green monster visiting and getting a bit seasick, however especially with the wind expected to go more from behind us tonight they are getting over it slowly it seems.
Besides that, everyone is just settling in again getting into the daily roles onboard, our plan for this race and trying our best to put ourselves in a good position.
Bye for now, Ryan, Charlie and Crew