Position: 23,26.35N , 61,9.30W

Speed: 14 knots, Course: 303 deg.

What a day! It all started off just as great as yesterday ended. The Pearl making gains on the competition, nice easy trade winds sailing, warm and sunny. Then in a one hour period, the spinnaker we had trouble with yesterday started parting at the seams after 30 minutes of use. Take it down, put up something else and Justin and Dirk out of the watch system for the third time in three days.

Then, the batteries were completely flat. Somehow, in a period of 2 hours max, we went from a full 24 volts to just 8 volts. Luckily we got the generator started but it took about 2 hours to get the batteries to a level where we could draw on them. Juggy found a wire that had come loose so we are hopeful that he found the problem. We will know tomorrow after seeing how the voltage holds up tonight. So we had no instruments or any electronics for about four hours. At the same time we had a problem with our keel canting mechanism that was also electronically related.

And of course all this happened right when the wind began to shift a lot and Jules and I needed to focus on the weather and tactics. So it has been a long day to say the least.

As of now, we have the keel working, the spinnaker fixed, and the batteries fully charged. We still don’t have some of our instruments working like radar and our Deckman routing tool as the main instrument package is down and we are running on the back up system.

Everyone is pretty tired so we need some stable conditions in order to get everyone a bit of sleep. However, the wind has just come up to 30 knots so it is not a time to relax. 30 knot is right on the edge of being too much for the masthead spinnaker so we may have to take it down and put up a fractional spinnaker just to prevent any further issues. My experience from

1997-1998 tells me that we can’t afford anymore major issues for a while.

Meanwhile, we are supposed to be looking outside the boat and figuring out what the weather is going to do and what our competitors have and are going to do. The weather we have is nothing like any of the forecasts, so we

won’t be relying on them. At the last sked, ABN Amro One and Movistar had gotten out of the hole we were all in and extended their lead on us. The rest of us were still stuck in the disintegrating low pressure cell. We got moving about 3 hours ago, so I hope we have stopped the bleeding with ABN Amro One and Movistar and we should have stretched on Brasil1 and Ericsson if the trend remained.

We are not really sure what the weather is going to do and the last few GRIBs have all been in conflict with each other and none has really proven to be accurate. So for now, we are going on the tack that is most direct to Baltimore.

I am going to put my head down for a few minutes before the sked comes.

PC

Pirates of the Caribbean

Position: 7,8.77N , 46,55.96W

Speed: 17 knots, Course: 311 deg.

We had been stressed about our lack of speed for long enough. Brasil1 kept putting miles on us and Ericsson was getting closer. Even though we could not see anything on the keel or rudder, we decided the only way to get the possibility that there was something still on there was to stop the boat and send a couple of guys in. A few days ago we hooked a long line that seemed to have all come off but we started talking ourselves into all kinds of possibilities like maybe there is still a piece of monofilament line on there that we can’t see, or that maybe there was some damage to the bottom of the hull that we could not see with the endoscope.

So at 1700 local time, we stopped the boat and Erle Williams and Anthony Merrington went in. The conditions were fairly tame, 13 knots of wind and smooth seas. Putting people in the water is never something to take lightly at sea. We discussed the whole maneuver before hand, set up ropes that hung over the entire length of the boat on each side, and had one crew member dedicated to watching and assisting each swimmer. The whole operation went smoothly. Fortunately or unfortunately, they found nothing.

From the time we headed up into the wind until we had all the sails back up

and sailing at speed on course was a total of five minutes. Since we were doing about 15 knots at the time, that operation cost us about 1.25 miles. Considering that we still have 2500 miles to go, it was worth the cost to have piece of mind.

So why have we been slow? I think we have a weak spot in our sail inventory and we have been sailing right in that spot for the past 30 hours. Basically it is 85-100 true wind angle at 14-17 knots. That should be the area covered by a sail called the R2 and ours just doesn’t seem very fast. Obviously we have been talking about that sail a lot and have some thoughts on how to improve it.

Despite the team swim, we managed to gain a couple of miles on Movistar and Brasil on the lat sked. Ericsson still gained on us as did ABN2 for the first time but it looks like they had more wind behind. We are not on the R2 anymore and we feel like we are going well again.

The forecast for the next 24 hours is for the wind to lift so we will be going from 100 degrees of True-Wind-Angle to 130 degrees of TWA over the next 12 hours. This will require us to change sails a couple of times to “Step” down from a headsail to the right spinnaker.

The conditions tonight are superb. Almost full moon, flat seas, 16 knots of wind, 25 C air temperature and we are reaching along doing 17 knots. Hard to beat that! Life inside the boat is getting better. The sea temp is down another degree to 27.7. We are almost sleeping during the day.

As far as sea life goes, last night we were attacked by flying fish. One center punched Craig Satterthwaite right between the eyes and knocked him down. Another one hit Ian Budgen in the arm. These little rockets fly in the daytime too but they are attracted to the lights on our instruments at night and come flying at the boat. They are very hard headed so they hurt when they hit you, sometimes at speed up to 20 knots.

Dinner is on the boil, literally. No matter how boring it is to eat the same food for two weeks, you are always looking forward to meal time out here. The midnight weather is coming up to so Jules and I will be working on that for an hour or so.

For your enjoyment, I am enclosing some photos from King Neptune’s visit a couple of days ago.

Paul Cayard

Pirates of the Caribbean

It was a stressful couple of days for us on the Pearl. The boat was not going very fast and we tried everything to get her going but to no avail. We also did get hit by more than our fair share of “parking lots” partly our fault and partly bad luck. Our competitors kept gaining on us and Ericsson was threatening to pass us last night just before the scoring gate at Noronha. That would have added a lot more pain to the frustration but fortunately we decided that if they were going to pass us they would have to go through us to leeward. So we just sailed up in front of them and planted our boat between them and Noronha with about 20 miles to go, shutting down the passing lane. They closed in to within 2 miles of us but that was as close as it got.

Of course we are puzzled by our lack of performance. We never really had a speed problem against boats like Ericsson or Brasil1 which are the same design as the Pearl.

Later, after rounding Noronha, we got hit by a few squalls which were packing 25 knots of wind. In one squall, while hitting 30 knots of boat speed, we noticed a large vibration from under the hull. Then suddenly it was gone. We don’t know if it was something that we had been dragging for two days or something we caught then and there. Of course we had checked out foils during the past two days and saw nothing. (We do that with an endoscope through a fitting in the bottom of the hull).

Anyway, we seem to be going well now.

We are approaching the Equator and will cross in just a few hours. This is another one of those big “landmarks” on an around the world passage. Three of our crew will be making the crossing for the first time; Jules Salter, Ian Budgen and Justin Ferris. We are expecting a visit King Neptune in a few hours for the ceremonial induction of these three.

On the weather front, Jules and I are working on the Doldrums crossing. As luck would have it, we will be crossing under a large cloud mass. The whole fleet is so close together that we should all get more or less the same weather. Normally you would like to have the good fortune of crossing in a gap between the largest clouds masses. These cloud masses undulate and appear and disappear without much pattern. So it is hard to say; “Oh, there is the bad spot, I will just go over here and have plenty of wind.” We are using the satellite pictures and the “quick scat” to try to pick our best point of crossing. However, as nothing is for sure about forecasting the best place to cross, the default setting is to sail your fastest course for the wind speed you have making the most distance toward Baltimore. That is the only thing that is for sure. For me, I don’t like deviating from the wind angle that generates the most boat speed toward “the barn” unless I have some very reliable information that justifies that investment.

Quick Scat is a satellite based, radar reading of the water surface in super fine resolution. From this reading, the software can discern, with very good accuracy, what the actual wind direction and speeds were at the point in time that the “picture” was taken. By the time we get the Quick Scat, it is rather “old” information, usually about 12 hours old, but it is helpful when used in correlation with Satellite pictures and the GRIB files.

The heat is down a bit today as we are under the high overcast of the Doldrums area. Life onboard is ok despite the heat. The crew are sleeping ok and the ride has been very tame. We may get some strong winds tonight under the squalls of the Doldrums. In these situations you need a versatile set up as the wind may go from 5 knots to 35 knots and back again in 10 minutes. We are planning now what will be the right set up on deck to handle those wind speeds at the angles we expect.

Yesterday we were treated to a little wildlife show. Some type of bird.looking like a miniature Albatross, but very fast and agile, were playing a game of tag or similar. One would chase the other and the one being chased would escape by eventually diving in the water from 50 feet up in the air and go down about 8 feet under water. It was impressive to see these little missiles pierce the water at that speed. When they weren’t playing tag, they were fishing using the same diving technique.

We are expecting the Pearl to gain an extra step to her pace as she starts to close in on her home turf.”The Caribbean”. There may be some good karma coming our way. It would not feel undeserved after the frustrating past couple of days.

Stay tuned.

Captain Paul

Pirates of the Caribbean

Position: 13,4.11S , 35,39.36W

Speed: 13 knots, Course: 34 deg.

It was a light a variable day today with winds as light as 3 knots. There is always a lot of anxiety when you have that little wind as you wonder what everyone else has. Today we had to fight our way through a large cell of little to no wind in order to hook into the trades.

We could see the cumulus clouds that mark the trades all day, but at boat speeds that we as low as 3 knots at times, it took us all day to go 40 miles. About 1600 local time we went under a cloud line and on the other side were the beautiful trades waiting to take us away.

We are now doing 12 knots of speed in 9 knots of wind at 80 true wind angle. These boats are machines in this wind speed.

All in all we had a pretty good day against the fleet today. At the 1000 sked, there was compression as we all closed in on Movistar who hit the light patch first. On the 1600 sked ABN1 and Ericsson made a nice move on the west side of the group, probably getting to leeward of a cloud that had rain coming out of it. On the 2200 sked, movistar extended 3 miles on us and ABN 1 gained one mile on us and we gained on the rest of the fleet.They still had very light wind at the time of the sked so we may have extended even more since then.

We are now kind of on autopilot for the next 48 hours. We are aiming straight at Fernando de Noronha, the island off Brazil that we have to leave to port and will count as a scoring gate. The wind will lift and head a little over the course to Fernando but there are no more major tactical decisions left to make until we leave Fernando. So it is all about setting the boat up to get maximum performance for the given wind speed and angle.

The sea is smooth so good for sleeping. And that is where I am off to next.

PC

POTC