1.12. 200 miles!!!

I have been secretly looking forward to experiencing what it is like when you sail in really high winds and mountainous waves that break behind the boat and soak you. Tonight we finally got something in that direction, but I missed it as I was off-watch and asleep.

Our course towards St. Lucia is currently a bit uncomfortable. Wind is at about 140-150 degrees from the bow - a little too much for the spinnaker, but too little for the jib. We drove half of the night with spinnaker at constant 10+ knots, but when the wind started to be steadily over 13 meters per second we decided to take it down. A beautiful maneuver straight from a study book and well timed. Half an hour later the wind was peaking at 18 meters per second. That is when Andrea got a shower from behind while at the helm.

Today seemed to become the first day with unstable weather and wind. When the morning broke spirits were very high. To start the day Janne clocked 14.7 knots with the main and jib with boom forming a butterfly or prayer book (virsikirja), as we say in Finland – a record speed so far without the spinnaker. We had pushed hard in varying conditions and the magical 200 miles as one day’s distance seemed achievable.

Unfortunately the weather continued to be unstable and soon a rain shower brought the wind down to 5-8 meters per second before peaking up again. Only 15 minutes before the timeline everyone was cheering that we will achieve the 200 mile target but then things started to happen. We got our first squall. First the wind died completely. During the next minute it turned 360 degrees. We all were holding our breath. Then it started to peak up and soon reached the normal 10 meters per second. What is most important, it stabilized in the same direction as it was before.

I went down to look at the GPS for the result, and YES! We had just reached 200 miles in 24 hours. The whole crew cheered. A few hours later there was even more reason for cheering. Results from the whole fleet showed we had caught the leader by 12 miles, now being only 28 miles behind. Even more intriguingly we won the 2nd by 6 miles and are now equal with them.

This showed that when we push hard we can challenge the leaders and it gave us a lot of self-confidence.

Hannu