One week on

Roryhamilton
Tue 25 Jun 2019 16:26
1235 BST 309NM to go to Lizard

Well, that’s one full week since we left Ponta Delgada in the Azores. After making great progress so far, it is not looking so good now. At the moment we are just about making good a course that will take us to Kinsale on the south coast of Ireland; un fortunately this isn’t the traingle race to Kinsale although ironically we have almost the same distance to go as it is from Torquay to Kinsale!

1430
Just seen a pod of at least 20 pilot whales (credit for  marine mammal identification to Mark). We are both feeling pretty frustrated that we aren’t going inn the right direction and looks like things will get worse. C’est la vie a mer!

On the YB tracker App the important number now to look for on all the boats is VMG (Velocity made good is how fast you’re actually closing your destination); it doesn’t really matter if you’re doing 7 knots if it’s in the wrong direction.  The boat with the highest VMG is closing in on finish the fastest. Between 1400 and 1500 this afternoon we’ve been sailing between 6 and 7 knots close hauled but our VMG was only 5.2 knots - still, better than we were expecting.

Is Boris going to be PM? Anyone can text Mark and I for free via the iridium website; our number is +881632629153

1720

Fair Isle just popped up 6NM ahead of us on AIS! Drama in the last quarter of the race! Fair Isle was our last AIS contact around 5 days ago; the epic duel continues…...