PHHHHEEEEEEWWW
Envoie la ouach' Fench!
Quite a good last 24 hours in the Dell Rugged Latitude Ocean Sprint., it seems like all the stars were aligned. We had a good weather window, good angle, good helms and even the satcom decided to fail just a couple of minutes after the start, leaving us with no personal communications, full focus. Mail4crew is back on now so if your loved one isn't answering it's not coming for Guy nor I.
24h of pushing the boat and us to the maximum, we decided to reduce our number of helm per watch to the four best ones during the night. When the sun rose, we decided to hoist our Code 3 (261m) and activate the post-combustion. I called back all the strongest people we have on board to help plug and hoist, the Code went up fairly smoothly but with a twist on the halyards, (we'll come back to that) we started surfing above 20kts, dipping the bow sometimes meters into the waves. Dario, Stuart and Jim at the bow putting the antiwrap net, swimming from time to time and probably swearing at the helmsman (me).
The wind, forecasted to ease, didn't. I started to wonder as I looked at the apparent wind coming close to the Code 3 limit (30kts), had I made a mistake? There are only two people capable of holding the Kite (Dario S. and I. Also Aleks helped a bit) so it wasn't very inclusive for the rest of the crew which is not in our habits.
Later on, after five hours flying, we broke one of the halyards due to the twist sawing through it. Major "KLONG" followed by a Category 10 mast vibration, the type of vibe that probably created a small tsunami on land (ooups). We grinded back the second halyard and went back to course, starting to think about dropping the Kite and coming back to Yankee 1. Guy came on deck to assess the situation and to let us know that we were at 14.2 kts average on the last 3 hours, which is pretty good. After flying the Kite a few more minutes he decided to take it down, called for some strong hands on deck and down it went very smoothly (everything seems very easy when you hide behind the helm). Yankee 1 went up and we started racing again. And I went to sleep.
Other than that, B&B in the galley (Bruce W. and Bruce S.) are doing a very good job given the very challenging conditions. A very good job averall by the Dare To Lead team, and North Luzon should be bearing 180deg tomorrow.
Have a great day,
Hugues & Guy.