The sailing has settled down a lot since my last post. Yesterday evening,
we had a spell of really light wind with the windseeker out, barely moving.
I think we were making a knot or two; you could just tell as the jellyfish
(some the size of a soccer ball!) drifted past. Or I guess we were probably
drifting past them. At one point, a big pod of dolphins came swimming
toward us, leaping out of the water as they approached. They got within
about a hundred yards, milled about a bit, seemed to decide we wouldn't be
much fun to play with, and swam away.
We were treated to probably our best sunset since I've been on board,
spectacular colors and just enough cloud to make it interesting. And
silhouetted against it was Visit Seattle, the nearest of the five
competitors we could see.
During the night, I was woken up early for a sail change. When you have
less than 3.5 hours to snooze, getting woken 30 minutes early can be really
annoying. However, when you hoist that spinnaker and proceed to pass the
guys you had been watching just ahead at sunset before they realise what's
happening, it's worth it. We kept under spinnaker for the whole watch,
bringing it down as the wind shifted, but having made the most of what we
had.
They day's sailing was upwind but pretty civilised. We got the windseeker
out early, but then the wind picked up, attributed by some to the magic
powers of the sail. Most of the day was moderate sailing in good weather,
something I was starting to think just didn't happen in ocean racing. (As
an aside: I came into this thinking it would be about 75% nice sailing with
25% of the really hard stuff. And I thought this Australian section would
be some of the nicest sailing. Instead, it's been about 90% really hard, 9%
near dead calm, and about 1% nice. Don't think it's going to catch up to my
expectations, but I hope it balances out a little bit.) I was the first to
spot land, which was pretty cool, if the least epic of all landspottings in
this race, coming barely 72 hours after leaving Sydney.
Frustratingly, we did get passed toward the end of they day by Visit
Seattle. We were actively trimming, doing everything we could, but they
were just a bit faster. Inconceivable! Maybe they weren't using the same
wind as us.
As I finish for the day, the wind has died down and the windseeker has gone
up again. This is pretty much in line with forecast, and everyone in the
fleet (at least the Clippers) are so close that it's still very
competitive. This feels a bit more like racing, and we're looking forward
to being involved in a tight finish.
No comments:
Post a Comment