Entries by Paul Cayard

Long Hard Day Pushing

Position: 41,22.44S , 75,3.69E Speed: 25 knots, Course: 105 deg. Sorry for not writing a report yesterday. It was a long hard day pushing to get every ounce of speed out of the boat heading for the scorings gate. I started to write my report last night and then there was a very loud bang. […]

We Hit the wall

Position: 39,14.15S , 59,24.9E Speed: 7 knots, Course: 32 deg. We hit the wall. We have hit light air and are watching the others sail up to us. We are still being tormented by the old cold front that we fell off the back of about 48 hours ago. This is the same front that […]

Interesting Day Today

Position: 41,8.50S , 52,35.54E Speed: 17 knots, Course: 82 deg. Very interesting day today that produced a lot of work for skippers and navigators. Basically the weather systems that we had been sailing in and planning on sailing for a few more days changed and we had to scramble to understand a new picture. The […]

We have been Battling All Day

Position: 42,30.94S , 46,56.79E Speed: 14 knots, Course: 59 deg. We have been battling with ABN 2 all day. They caught up to us and nearly passed us in 20 knots reaching conditions. They recorded the best runs of the four lead boats on the last two position reports. Their extra form stability was perfect […]

We Continue to March Along

Position: 42,56.9S , 38,23.49E Speed: 18 knots, Course: 82 deg. We continue to march along to the east is 18-20 knots of wind from 020. All is well onboard the Pearl although we did have a small electrical fire. Juggy and Jules sorted out. It was a “two alarmer”. That means it was only severe […]

We Found the Wind, Finally

43 south 25 East / Boat speed: 25 knots, Course 100True We found the wind, finally. It has been a slow start to Leg 2 but now we are on the “highway” heading east and chewing up miles. We throttled back on the second night when things got rough and Ericsson and Brasil 1 broke. […]

A Rough 15 Hours

It has been a rough 15 hours out here. Yesterday afternoon the wind came up to 30 knots from the southeast and some rather large and steep waves built up. Port tack in particular was very rough. The Pearl was launching off the waves at 11 knots and slamming down hard making some awful sounds […]

That was a Crazy Start

That was a crazy start. I haven’t been on a boat without steerage for years. And it happened not just once but a few times in the first 2 hours of the race. Boat were backing down, gybing upwind, it was chaotic. The start itself wasn’t bad. We had about 5 knots of wind and […]

Tough Day for the Pirates

Tough day for the Pirates today. The day started off with some bad news in that our man Justin (Juggy) Clougher was not able to sail due to a violent case of the stomach flu. We were lucky to have a very good sailor working in our sail loft, Jeremy Smith, being able to fill […]