June 24 – With a steady wind on starboard quarter we are making good progress with speeds in the 5s and 6s. As the evening approached we seemed to get a burst of energy requiring a reef to placed in the main and head sail. That will see us through the night. Reefing the sails doesn’t necessarily mean that the boat goes more slowly. Its just more under control less healed therefore more comfortable to be in and less likely to be overpowered and swoop up into the wind which can be a bit alarming. The night was starry and not too cold. Good views of the Milky Way. It’s time like this when I wish I could identify more stars. I have a star finder but in the mass of stars it’s still not that straightforward to identify a particular star or formation.

June 25 – The night was one of the most uneventful but we made good progress. At first light we were banging along at 6s and 7s with the occasional 8 as we surfed down a wave. Its exciting sailing and fully under control. Looking back from the cockpit area RT just seems to dance along on the waves effortlessly. There are a few things I would take the designer, Laurent Giles to task on but hull shape is not one of them.

The morning again is  mixture of cloud and blue sky and will probably alternate between the two throughout the day. The wind is still blowing us along and we should return a good mileage for the day. 

Its now about midday. The sun is shining we have about 25 kts on our starboard quarter and its amazing downwind sailing. The sea is a deep blue and sparkling under a clear blue sky. The sea state is what I would term a confused swell. The occasional biggy gets up behind us and 15 tonnes of RT surfs along reaching 9.1 kts on one recent wave. The forecast for the next few days is good.

You may wonder where we get the forecasts from. They are provided via the Satellite Communications service provider who operates this blog website, Mailasail. You request a forecast by email giving the co-ordinates of the area you are interested in and the number of days, maximum three and back comes a forecast in the form of a grib file. There are various formats that can be requested. We request a series of diagrams showing wind direction and strength for three days with one diagram for every 12 hour period. The files are generated by a weather service automatically from weather information fed in from many sources. There is no human interpretation of the data. All the data is fed into a computer model and what comes out is what we get. From our experience the wind speeds are under estimated and local conditions can turn things on their head particularly where winds are light. Generally if we are going to get a blow we know about it so that we can at least prepare.