11. Going the distance
Telefonica Black
Lance Shepherd
Wed 29 Jan 2020 08:13
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15:43.557N 044:51.227W - Number of Gybes: 15 - Distance
to Antigua: 978 nm - ETA: 02/02/2020 16:22h
Maximum speed today: 16.9 - Winner of the day:
Johannes
We really hope you liked the blogs of people other than
myself the last couple of days. There most likely will be more to come. But not
today, today you are getting an 'usual' update on how we are doing. First I have
to correct the 'winner of the day' of yesterday. It was brought to my attention
that at 23.45h the record of Alex was crushed by 1,5 knot by Marie. The only
other lady on the boat apart from Claire and myself.
Marie (GER) was wave boarding in Panama when she was
invited by a skipper to cross the Pacific with him. She really wanted to go but
did not trust the motives of the guy in question and decided against it. After
finishing her master degree in sports she decided to go to Las Palmas and do
some wave boarding down there. As a new returnee on Facebook she stumbled on the
page of Telefonica Black and saw they were heading to Las Palmas too. She wrote
an email when she was still in Germany and a couple of days later she
received a message back from Claire that she was welcome on board in 2
days. She hadn't even touched down in Las Palmas yet!
Marie her only sailing experience is being a
'jib-monkey' as she puts it, during a dinghy event some time ago. She is however
taken by the ocean and is an incredible fast learner. Marie has more than once
set the benchmark for the 'speed of the day' competition and yesterday she even
took the prize home.
If you look at the speed of the day you might think we
are doing great overall. Do not get me wrong, we are doing great, but we are
also behind schedule. Leaving Las Palmas we expected to arrive in Antigua on the
31st of January at the latest, but the wind strength and direction have not been
our friend the last week which makes that we are doing a much greater distance
than anticipated.
Just some numbers:
Total nm done: 2307
Total nm to do: 978 in a straight line, which will most
likely be around 1300 with the angles we are doing
Average speed: 9 knots
Max. speed overall: 19,9 knots
On Telefonica Black we cannot sail dead down wind, which
means we always have to sail in angle off the wind (around 110-120
degrees). So instead of a straight line from Las Palmas to Antigua we have to
Gybe down. Those are the angles you see our tracker. Because the wind pressure
sometimes drops to a mere 13-14 knots we have to sail sharper angles (90-100
degrees) to keep the boat moving. This means we are doing much more distance
than we anticipated. In a straight line the trip would have been 2700 nm but it
is safe to say that we will have done about 3700 nm upon arrival on Antigua..
Luckily we cannot influence the weather
 Life on board is still very good. We are
really surrounded by an amazing bunch of talented people. We
did another watch rotation so now it is my turn to be with Marie and Pierre.
Yesterday we saw another sailing boat, the first in 4 days and we finally have
proof that we are not alone in this world! Jose flew his drone again today which
really is an (exciting) thing. Especially landing back on the boat. I got the
chance to see some footage and believe me, it is awesome.
Even though we are running out of fresh food so the
ratio of freeze dried will increase, Claire is still doing her magic from
the galley (kitchen) which is truly amazing. The galley doesn't even deserve the
word galley if you look at how limited it is. We did run out of sugar to put in
our coffee/tea but have sweeteners to compensate and there are enough sweets on
the board which also help.
Slowly everybody is starting to think
about their next step. Most people are planning to stay in Antigua for a
little while before trying to hitchhike to other destinations. Only Drew has
different 'problems', his flight leaves on the second of February in the morning
and he will most certainly not be able to make it. That really sucks, not for
him (his lovely wife is changing the flight for him) but for me, because winning
the raffle is out of the question now..
Enjoy your day!
Angela
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