I think I gave an excessively negative impression of morale on board in my
last post. Don't get me wrong, people are a bit on edge, and all those
things I mentioned did happen. And that's without even getting into the
really nitpicky stuff, like who ate more than their share of chocolate or
who did a mediocre job of cleaning the heads.
But the overall atmosphere is pretty good. For example, Justin just had a
laugh about the fact that he never thought he'd be kneading bread while
people wooled a kite around him. Han cracked a joke about how much we're
paying to do this work, and everyone had a laugh. More broadly, we have a
crew where most people get on with most other people and respect what they
bring to the table and the effort they put in most of the time. It's
actually impressive things don't get worse under these conditions. Again,
it's a huge improvement over the last leg. I'm not really sure how to
compare to Leg 4. That was also a really good crew, and people got along
well, I think comparable to now. But I was the new guy on board at that
point. I had little to compare to, and I was really busy just figuring my
own stuff out, so my perspective is completely different.
I do, however, stand by what I said about he cold. That was thoroughly
unpleasant. We had snow. We had rain. We had sleet and hail. These may not
stop the US Postal Service messengers from the swift completion of their
appointed rounds, but they are a bitch to sail in. Fortunately, it broke
slightly last night, and we had a decent morning of sailing today.* We
had the lightweight spinnaker, aka Code 1 up, the sun was out, no water was
coming over the deck, and we were consistently making 10-13 knots. It was
nice while it lasted, but the cold front is coming. And while the forecast
has moderated a bit, it still looks to be a lively one.
*By decent, I mean that I was wearing more clothing that I ever thought
possible, but it was tolerable instead of painful. Talk about defining
deviancy downward.
I don't think I've mentioned race position in a while, which is strange,
because we're doing pretty well. The leader, Derry, has pulled away a bit.
But we're in a group of three boats trading off the next three positions
and pulling away from the fifth and further back boats. We have a real
chance at a podium. This isn't lost on us, but there's more focus on just
getting there.
2113 nm to go
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