Another Long Day

Another long day and I am writing this at 0530 on the 5th. We are now about 80 miles north of Sanxenxo. We did a lot of sail testing and polar definition work today. This is tedious work, sailing for 10 minutes at a given angle and recording the performance of the boat with a given sail. After you do all the appropriate angles in that windspeed for that sail, you put up another one and do some more. Easy to burn 6 hours doing it and of course you slow your progress to the barn as you sail off course. But it has to be done.

We had a bit of breeze from 2200 Tuesday to 0400 this morning.

The wind compressing at the north western corner of Spain got up to 28 knots and we were hitting 30 periodically and averaged 21 knots for four hours. Ripping along like that in total darkness…no moon tonight…is something that is impossible to explain. Inside the boat is so loud that no one was able to sleep.

Now the wind is droping and rotating to the north to follow the coast of Spain and this is slowing our progress. Could be a long last 80 miles.

I think we are all pretty tired. It has been another big push for 8 days. Sail up to Holland, work on the mast, get it in, and sail back. Testing and working all the way. That is close to another 2000 miles for the Pearl.

Our shore team is waiting for us tomorrow and the work list that we generated during the 2000 miler is going to get attacked. We wont sail for at least a week.

I think we are all looking forward to some good food from Chef Rehana and is supurb assistant Jo.