by Tom Addis (navigator)
Still chipping away at the leaders with the Green Dragon being the big danger to everyone - they could ‘buffalo’ the fleet here. It’s extremely unstable at the moment. Squalls, which we normally get mainly at night, have been around all day and it’s like being in a pinball machine - bouncing from one to another - winning on some and losing on others. Right now we are losing on one which is just crossing our bow as we creep along at 6 knots but it is just as tough for the others from the look of the last sched. It’s going to be a very tricky next three days or so trying to pick our way through this minefield as we head towards Fiji.
I'm hanging on the next weather download in 30 mins to grab a look at the quikscats and satellite images to see if we can glean any good info out of them to help us through. Still looking for low risk options - our boatspeed the last few days has been really good and we feel that if we can get into the same patch of water as the others in this light to moderate reaching, then we will do well. And, with very light stuff to come, starting with the leaders, we are happy to follow them in and hopefully get a restart with them for the run down to the scoring gate at 36S.
It’s amazing how quickly things change, going from relentless power reaching, where it was very difficult to get things done and keep on top of the job list to now, a day or so later, when we have all the time in the world for everything. Everyone deals with it in their own way, catching up on sleep, emails, catching up on maintenance or just reflecting. I'm the reflective type and have been thinking about home ever since we crossed longitude 155 11E! It’s latitude 33 50S next - we will be a fair way east though - no danger of me trying to swim for it!! Must be the navigator in me when I know the lat and long of where I live!! So I'm sitting here just typing stuff into the computer about things to do, think about, projects (my wife normally gives up on waiting and GTMI [Gets The Man In] anyway!) once I get home in a month or so.
Breeze just picking up now – 14 knots boatspeed, by the look of this cloud, it is lined up quite nicely for us and we should get quite a nice run out of it for 10 miles or so. We will deal with the future after that! So back up on deck and make sure we stay positioned nicely with it to get as far down the track with it as possible. Nice, friendly, helpful, benevolent, thoughtful cloud.......
Adios (slowly learning more Spanish)
Volvo Ocean Race
Thursday, 26 February 2009
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