Good morning!
It looks we managed to find the only wind hole in the Southern Ocean!
Over the past 24 hours we had steady winds of 20-30 knots which increased to 30-40 by the time it got dark. We were cruising along at 12-22 knots (Andy Krapf broke the previous boat record set by Tanya at 19.9 knots with a 22.5 knot surf!) but now we are sitting in about four to eight knots of wind and are bobbing around at six or seven knots, which feels like standing still after days and days of high wind and boat speeds.
The crew had to work hard to get the boat going again (we went from a reefed main and a Yankee 3 to full main and Yankee 1), unfortunately there is not much more we can do about it and we have to hope this won’t last for too long.
Besides the wind hole problem, all is good on board Qingdao. Since we left Punta the sailing has been great, we got the three points from the scoring gate and with close to 1400 nautical miles to go we still have some time to make up for the miles we are losing towards the rest of the fleet now.
The next big challenge will be the Elliot Brown Ocean Sprint which is about a day away, where we could potentially score another one to three points.
After that we will be heading straight for Cape Town and I cannot wait to see Table Mountain on the horizon!
Fair winds and a following see!
Chris