Good morning,
I can’t believe we’re already at Day 20 of Race 10, with under 2000nm to go. The conditions we’ve had the past few days have been everything an ocean sailor dreams of. 20-25kts from the beam with a nice rolling sea to surf on, simple but fast sailing and relatively comfortable down below. The days really fly by when it’s like this. The temperature is still mild, a few layers have been put back in the bag, ready to make another appearance when we get a northerly wind in a few days' time.
We were all very happy to receive the last position report to see that we’re polling ahead of PSP Logistics and Dare To Lead. There’s still a long way to go and we’re positioned quite differently to them so we will continue to keep pushing hard to stay ahead and try to catch Yacht Club Punta del Este and Our Isles and Oceans.
At some time today we should catch onto a low-pressure system which is looming above us and gradually building, that we hope to stay in until the Ocean Sprint or possibly further. We’re currently in part 3 of 5 of our race chunks, with the Ocean Sprint the big focus of part 4. Our current motivation is to get west fast before putting our all into the Ocean Sprint.
In a previous blog, when we had passed the halfway mark of Race 10, I briefly mentioned the difficulties of starting to think about the finish and how far you’ve already sailed. We’ve now reached a point in the race where managing that balance is crucial. There’s a fine balance to keeping motivated, and for some people, they can afford to think about distance to finish, but others just need the motivation of how far they’ve already come. Getting that balance right is very tricky and it’s possibly one of the biggest factors contributing to motivation onboard. It’s something every crew member has to manage and is why we’ve broken the race down into five parts, as it helps everyone focus on short term goals within over big goal of racing across the North Pacific.
Ella, Hannah and the Washington, DC crew.