British Soldier - TransAtlantic Race - Sitrep no 4

Britishsoldier
Fri 1 Jul 2011 12:28
Position at 1630 Z today Thursday: 41deg 32 N, 59 deg 29 W (about 340 NM
south of the western corner of Newfoundland). 183 NM logged in the last 24 hrs.

At long last the wind is up (17 kts) and we're flying along at 9+ kts with
the big blue spinnaker set, the sun's out and the crew have an hour less on
deck today - not quite true, but we did advance our watches an hour since we
crossed a time zone.

James Kayll and his 3 fellow rowers must be close to the end of their 70-odd
day paddle across the Indian Ocean. Good luck for the remainder of the
voyage James, if you've not gone mad yet. We hope to complete this trip in
under a third of that time - or go nuts ourselves.

Otherwise all's well. Thanks for the Wimbledon news....all the players
sound Polish, although someone on board did pretend to know who was who.

Update Thursday 1900Z:

Wind got up to 26 kts and shifted 25 degrees to the W. Small
matter of a Chinese gybe - Rich Hall's first, and for most others on the
crew. Martin Livingston was trimming the kite, up to his waist in the salty
stuff and the skipper was ejected from his bunk. All recovered without
damage and now running under the small heavy kite. Still managed 11 kts
though. This breeze could be in for a while yet... A learning day :-)

Friday 1100 Z. 42deg 53 N, 56deg 23 W - about 150 NM south of the island of
Newfoundland.

It was a long night - the wind died, swung to WNW and gave us a
left-over sea and thick fog again - very testing. But this morning the fog
has lifted and we're running along at 8 kts towards the NE. The off-watch
are sleeping well!


TransAtlantic Race tracker: www.transatlanticrace.org/tracker

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