N 21 deg 02', E 118 deg 22' -- Race 8, Day 6

Apologies for the lack of blogs, especially to my mom, my most loyal
reader. Three issues: we're REALLY short-handed, conditions have been
tough, and (the big one)the keyboard is broken.

We're down to twelve crew now, the absolute minimum we're allowed to sail
with. We lost five from the last race Three were sick/injured most of that
race, so we don't really miss them. But two others, Ryan and Justin, are
big losses. And Ryan had a good music collection. He set me up with
all-Rush playlists a few times for helming and mother watch, though his
Van Halen selection is a bit heavy on Sammy Hagar era. Fortunately,
they'll be back for the next leg. We also picked up Nick (a returning
crewmember) and Paul and Kat from other boats. But still, some crew are
not super useful. Others are good but limited. I'm one of six, maybe seven,
who get called in for any big, physical job, even if it's in the middle
of our already short downtime. Result. tired.

And there has been a lot of physical work. We've been sailing upwind,
always tough. We've seen 40+knots and 5m swells. We were planning to be
conservative about sail changes so as not to burn people out. But then we
found ourselves in the lead, so that plan got chucked. And a modification
to the main that the race office insisted on to stop reefing lines
snapping but nobody thought would work didn't work, so we had to drop the
main, re-rig it, and re-hoist, all while at sea. Then the repair to
the main track from the problem we had shortly after I joined failed, so we
had to drop the main again, and we've been sailing without it for two days
now, though we might have a fix in mind. In short, it's been hard.

But the keyboard may be the biggest problem. Just this little bit has taken
nearly an hour to type, and hours are just really hard to come by these
days. I'll try to get in some more updates as I can, but it's going to be
lighter than previous races. Again, apologies. You can get some news
(though lacking my flair and personal touch) from the skipper reports and
official crew diaries. Hope to be back to regular reporting for the Pacific
crossing.