29.11. Half-and-half

Halfway: 1 337 miles behind us - 1 337 to go. By now everyone has settled to the daily rhythm.
Sleep is sporadic. You have to be able to collect your daily dose from two to three four to five hour naps. This is facilitated by the steady rhythm; watches, meals, dishwashing, all come regularly. Since the weather and wind have been close to perfect all the time and there are no damages to the boat, it has been quite lazy. We have been able to concentrate on driving the boat.

The highlight of the day - besides the delicious meals - is always 2 PM call to our land racing base. All boats deliver their twelve o’clock GMT coordinates to the ARC race office, from where our own base collects the information. During last 24 hours we made our record sail: 199 miles. We are eagerly waiting what was the response from others and it is getting more and more exciting.

We managed to catch the overall leader by 10 miles and now she is only 37 miles ahead of us. Tie for the 2nd position is very close. We clocked almost the exactly the same miles as the second boat and are only TWO miles behind. Spreading the difference of two miles over seven days means that every second counts…

Spirit on the boat is fantastic. Our Finnish pop & rock music is being played and people sing. At the dinner table Andrea tells the joke of the day.

Today dinner was even more special than normally, we celebrated the halfway mark with 3 bottles of spumante. The meal was Andrea's catch of the day, a delicious four-kilo fish with an incomprehensible name prepared in the oven with lemon and rosemary. Buenisimo!!

It has been interesting to follow how we have developed as individuals as well as a team. Spinnaker maneuvers go very smoothly and everyone is capable of driving the boat well with spinnaker up. It tells a lot that what we were most afraid of in advance was driving the boat with the spinnaker at speeds of 10+ knots in complete darkness at 15 meters per second winds among 3-4 meter waves. Now we are doing it routinely, night after night and it comes naturally without taking any risks.

Again we can only praise the qualities of our Swan, and respect the ocean.

Hannu