Today was a special day. The sun came out and it warmed up considerably. We had a birthday on board, and we crossed the 130 degree W latitude line. As my more verbose crew might have already mentioned on this blog (I don’t know for sure, we don’t have internet access), today is Nico’s birthday. He is just 24 years old. He is our bow man, and brings constant energy and enthusiasm to the boat. He is constantly thinking about how to make the boat go faster. He is mature beyond his numerical age. I gave him a small bottle of Avion Tequilla, that we enjoyed during our first ocean sunset.
David showered showered with buckets of salt water and inspired me to do the same. Shortly after we crossed the 130 Latitude line and finally entered into the deep pacific, the winds picked-up to 10 knots and we got a boat speed averaging around 7 knots. After a day of relatively light winds, this was welcome. As sailors, we got excited by this increase in boat speed. We had much less wind during the day, and what we had was shifty, but we paid attention and made the most of every puff of wind (often lasting 3 to 5 minutes before dying out).
We flew the new S2 today, but it was too soon to hold the desired course, so we changed to A1.5. Avion is a unique boat in many ways, but especially in our sail plan. We carry both symmetrical and asymmetrical spinnakers. This gives us maximum flexibility in taking advantage of the wind. Most boats are designed for one or the other type of spinnaker, so this is a competitive advantage. Avion is a solid, medium displacement boat, so she is not the fastest boat in this race. But she has the advantage of being very stable in the water, and comfortable below, and stioll realtively fast. Someone recently said she was “cigar shaped”, in reference to being long and narrow. She has a deep keel and a blade of a mast, so is fast and stable, a good combination for a long ocean race.
The boat feels good. Crew have settled in and know where everything is. We are doing shift changes in 5 minutes versus 15-20 minutes a few days ago. There were no new issues or repairs today. We have plenty of food, water and fuel, although I think the cooler ice will only last another 24 hours. This race will take longer than the 12-14 days we planned for, but we should be able to adjust and handle it.
We only have email and text messaging access over the Iridium phone. I wanted to get data transfer functional as well, but it is just not happening. We have all adjusted to email as our means of communication, as it is working and reliable. I download GRIB files of the Eastern Pacific twice a day for navigation planning. The latest GRIBS suggest we will find some 15 knot winds to our south tomorrow, so we are heading that way.
More to come…Tom
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