Day 10 Post By Jon
Exhaustion Set in
Day 10 8:00 A.M. (858 Nautical Miles (NM) from Hawaii)
Note I think we reported the wrong Latitude on Day 9 by one degree which would have made the distance made good calculation of 184 NM rather than 132 NM and today’s 181 NM rather than 228. I’m sure it will be no problem for the race committee since it was an honest mistake and not a tactical move to give all of those boats in front of us a false sense of security!
Day 10 6:00 P.M. (784 NM from Hawaii)
No earlier posts today because I found myself too tired to do anything but sleep. I was unable to sleep my two previous off watches prior to going down this morning at 6:00 A.M. I’m not sure why. You would think that after 9 full days my body would have adjusted and wanted sleep. It may have been the excitement of having made the halfway point; whatever the reason the crew was worried. Tom, my hot bunk mate, took one look at me and said. “Do you want to be off for 6 hours rather than 4, you look like you could use some extra rest. ” My response was, “Is it that obvious”, and he countered with, “Oh yes”. Thankfully once my head hit the pillow I was out for 6 hours.
Our winds are still staying moderate at 17 plus knots with an occasional bump to 20. Our boat speed hovers around 7 knots with a few joy rides making it above 9 knots. While I was down the crew changed spinnakers from the reaching asymmetric to the more downwind symmetric, giving Nico another mark on his arm to 17, Juan still likes the idea of converting them to tattoos. We shook the reef out of the sail around 3 P.M. We just completed one of our few All Hands On Deck commands to jibe the spinnaker. After 8 days of being on a Starboard Tack we are now on Port. This means that he wind is now coming off of our port side (you’re left facing forward) of the boat rather than the starboard side (you’re right while facing forward). This was the first time we were able to test out our new two spinnaker pole rig. Tom wanted two poles and worked on various options before settling on the new aluminum pole to complement our standard carbon fiber pole. The broken end from yesterday’s broach was on the aluminum pole but our MacIver fixed it so we are now functional with two poles. We will see how good of a fix Kent made because it is now the pole flying. My guess it will get us to our next jibe.
Before the jibe we were running a course of around 250 while our current course is around 200 with the bearing to Hawaii of 221 degrees. At some point we will have to jibe back over to starboard to complete the course to Hawaii. We planned this setup 3 days ago when we chose to go more west early and then swing south later hoping those boats that went south earlier will be experiencing less wind tomorrow giving us an opportunity to catch them. The waves are getting larger and more spread out but they are very confused causing the boat to list in all directions. The larger sets are coming off our stern but there are some smaller sets that are crossing our bow resulting in a rather uncomfortable ride, but nothing serious.
Now that I am rested all is well on the boat. Tom and I have modified our watch schedules by two hours so I am off until 8 so it is some Me Time now. I will post this and see what this evening brings with our new tack. If these winds hold we are hoping to arrive in Hawaii on Tuesday giving Lindi and Angie plenty of time to provision and plan for the return trip since they are arriving on Saturday. Not that they won’t be partying with Al and Michelle and all of the boats that arrive before us!
While I was setting up to post Tom at the helm made another entry into the Rocket Club with 10.11 but not his personal best. John still is in the lead with 10.75, my best is 10.36.
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