Good morning,
We are pounding our way across the Dell Rugged Latitude Ocean Sprint. Our current course is a little north of west, so this will add on a few extra miles, but our speed is good. I recently awoke to a quiet boat. Sure it was powered up and healed over by about 40 degrees, with waves slamming the underside of the hull and breaking over the deck, but things seemed to be in order. Nevertheless I could not shake that sense of anticipation (as discussed yesterday). I walked into the galley and hey presto, what did I find?? As if today wasn't exciting enough, we had added three litres of cooking oil to the bilge boards, the bilges, the ladder, the deck and our shoes. I guess yesterday's impromptu foam party came too soon.
We are expecting the boat to flatten out over the next 12-18hrs as the wind rotates behind us. Everyone is itching to get the Spinnaker back up. Or itching from prickly heat rash. Either way there is much itching. We only have 600nm left in which to use our Stealth Mode: so, when the tracker light goes out we will be rubbing our oily hands together and trying to find ways to over take Dare To Lead, Zhuhai and the rest of the fleet. There is plenty of light and shifty wind in the forecast between here and Subic Bay and we are hopeful for some major fleet compression. When we left the Doldrums Corridor there was some very fast and clever sailing which has left us with a lot of catching up to do.
Here we go.
Ian and Mike.