Hello Qingers!
Well here we go! Back to it! After a lovely long stopover in the very picturesque Ha Long Bay, we’re all well rested and ready to get back to sea. Very excited to get to China and one step closer to our home port.
We had our second Le Mans start of the race and the crew did just as great as the first. Sails were up and drawing fast and we pulled away with the front pack. After the first ten minutes (where all boats have to stay on an assigned course and not touch their sail plan) we changed to a kite along with most of the fleet. It feels wrong pushing a kite upwind, but it does work, and we knew the wind will only be going down.
The fleet soon split into two packs, one where the sail plan allowed the teams to point higher on the wind and one who went lower and a bit faster. We are in the latter – still comfortably making the mark and being further from the island, giving a wind shadow, and so theoretically getting out of the wind whole sooner.
I say “theoretically” because as I type this, we are still in the wind whole we’ve been in most the night and the boats closer to shore have found some wind and are currently going 4 knots faster than us! Well done to them. We’re currently working very hard for any little gain we can get while waiting for the wind to fill in so we can chase them down.
That's all for now as I’m off to scratch a back stay and whistle the wind in.
Love to those at home,
Henry, Phil and the dragon riders