Good morning Black Betty fans, and it really is a good morning today.
It’s currently 0122 ships time and we are flying along under white sails at 100% VMG which is certainly a nice change after the long slog upwind to get to the northern end of the race course. After seemingly being on the wrong side of every wind shift on our way up here, it looks like things are finally starting to go our way. The last sched was very encouraging, and the next one is due within the hour. Looking at the positions of the boats ahead of us (which at the time of writing is still ALL of them!) and the weather forecast it would appear that the front runners are being hindered by either a lack of wind and/or wind from the wrong direction. In the next 24 hours I am hoping that we see some serious compression of the fleet and looking at the GRIBS this might just happen.
It's time to keep everything crossed that it does, as we have quite an amount of catching up to do. The team are still in good spirits and we are pushing as hard as we can, as we rounded Virtual Mark (VM) Knox-Johnston earlier on this evening the crew executed a text book drop-hoist-drop-hoist of anti-wrap net, Yankee 1, Mr Medium Weight the third and Staysail. Sadly, this was just after last light, so our OBR Maeva was unable to catch any of the action on film, but take it from me it was flawless, no sign of Black Betty's Black Cat anywhere, well not on deck anyway.
BBBC has made an appearance today though, but in first it appeared below decks not above. Late afternoon and all was well, until our Nav PC started making some rather loud and angry sounding beeps along with a warning of critical power. Some investigation was required! Now my little brother is a genius when it comes to the black magic of computers and stuff, so my first thought was 'What would Bruv do?' So, I tried the techies instant go to, off ‘n’ on again, but to no avail. With my technical knowledge now fully depleted I was left in the nav station doing some serious head scratching, some battery swapping, charger swapping and anything else I could think of. At this point it is worth mentioning that BBBC taking our nav PC out is more of an annoyance than anything else, as with most things on a Clipper 70 we have redundancy. All the information that we require to safely navigate can be obtained from our Garmin instruments, so we were able to keep racing at full tilt. A quick phone call to tech Mike from tech support, who is currently Dare To Lead’s stand in Additionally Qualified Person (AQP), helped establish that the cradle in the nav locker was the issue, so then it was time to take that out of the equation. The set up with the nav PC is great as it offers several different work arounds for a whole myriad of different scenarios, to start with the nav PC is actually a Dell Rugged Laptop, not an actual PC! With a few cable ties cut here, and a few wires re-routed there, the monitor removed from the door and some bungee screwed down to the nav desk and hey presto, problem solved! We now have our Nav laptop literally lashed to the nav desk and we are all systems go, the biggest issue now is getting used to typing on a new keyboard. As much as BBBC keeps reappearing to hound us, we won't let it stop us.
It's now just after midday on board and we are going well, we rounded the final of the three northern VM’s in the early hours and now we are setting ourselves up for the best angle for the Dell Latitude Rugged Ocean Sprint, the start of which, on our current course is only about 14 miles away. The weather has played in our favour over the past few hours and we have seen some good gains on the fleet as a whole. If it wasn't for the rain, we would have line of sight with GoToBermuda right now, in fact we are so close that I have just radioed Wavy (David Immelman - GoToBermuda Skipper) as we have just gybed over and currently have a CPA with them of less than 500 meters!
In a huge oversight every day since we left Subic Bay, I have failed to introduce our newest team member aboard Black Betty. Now keeping Larry the Lamb company in the nav station, and generally assisting with running the whole show (assisting Larry that is, not me), may I introduce Norman the nav station penguin. While racing from Airlie Beach to Subic Bay I requisitioned a baby penguin, and without missing a beat the awesome Clipper Race Maintenance Team delivered and waiting on the dock for us was Norman. Anyway, got go now as Norman has just whispered in my ear that it’s time to hoist Mr Medium weight the third.
Wish us luck in the Dell Latitude Rugged Ocean Sprint.
Black Betty OUT!