Oh what a beautiful morning
Purple Mist
Skipper: Kate Cope
Sat 22 Jun 2019 08:39
When I left you last night we had too little sail up and I was unhappy about the lack of speed. I knew the stronger winds were coming they just hadn’t arrived. I distracted myself by playing music and watching the stars.
After a few hours the wind increased dramatically and went west . At this point I was then congratulating myself for being so wise as the J4 and full main were perfect for a spot of surfing
The sails even coped with “squall of the century “ when a huge squall with up the 34kta gusts passed over. The boat screamed along at up to 14.5kts. This should get us back some miles though no doubt the lead boats have probably being doing this all night. The only problem with doing those speeds is you keep up with the squall so I had 45mins of slightly nerve jangling surfing at crazy speeds
At watch change it seemed more prudent to pop in a reef and she has been a bit more stable ever since
This morning to sun is shining and the waves have built up. They always look small in photos but I tried to capture them
Meanwhile the penguins were sick of having wet coats dumped on themso have moved to look after the food instead.
730miles to go !! not much more than a Fastnet race.
