Dag 12: Squalls, objectives, olympics

Ronja
Jan Morten Ruud
Sat 5 Dec 2009 13:31
 
Dear readers,
 
no need to beat around the bush: It's been a long, squally night and we're tired and hungry. But happy. With one exception where we got terrilbly wet, we criss-crossed successfully between the squalls and the groups of squalls so that we stayed dry and kept the winds blowing. Unlike other squally nights we have maintained a good speed and now that the trade winds are back at 10 meter per second we think today will be another good day for Ronja.
 
We wonder, by the way what the vikings called the trade winds. The brits, with their sense of fair play, felt that they had to give something in order to get something. Our proud ancestors, the vikings, were not burdened with any such notions. So when a an easterly wind appeared on the Oslo fjord maybe they got together and said something like: "Aaahh, the winds are blowing in a good direction today. Could it be the Rampage & Pillage winds? Naaa - too early in the season for that yet." Or something like that.
 
We have registered that our friends and esteemed competitors at Go Beyond have developed a highly structured and prioritized list of objectives which they follow up at regular intervals. (jeez - have they attended too many strategy sessions?) We have also made a list of objectives but we have not been able to prioritize it. The list looks like this:
 
* Beat Escape and Go Beyond
* Survival
 
The reason why we have not been able to prioritize the list is because some crew members felt that beating Escape and Go Beyond were more important than survival, and we were not really able to move the discussion forward from there:-) Note to these boats: Don't get smug just because we're a little bit behind! We have yet to launch SECRET WEAPON NO.2 (code name: North Beach)!!
 
PRESS RELEASE
From: The International Olympic Comittee
 
The International Olympic Comittee (IOC) is proud to annouce Squalls Slalom as a new event at the 2016 games to be held in Rio de Janeiro. Says President Juan Antonio Samarach: In order to make the Rio games the best games ever we knew we needed to come up with something spectaluar. And we have been so impressed with the level of seamanship and navigational strategy that we have seen at the 2009 ARC rally that we immediately felt that Squalls Slalom should be included. In addition, the event is very TV friendly since viewer can see radar images on their screens. We know this will be popular - at least we know it keeps the kids at S/Y Ronja awake at night. We have also reason to believe that the same boat, as a part of some 15-year plan that they are babbling about, will be the first boat to register for the event.
 
And that was all the news from your affectionate crew aboard S/Y Ronja. Best regards from all of us!
 
 
Coordinates:   W49.43.296., N17.59.280

Distance totalt current rute: 2720 Nm
Sailed distance last 24 hours: 153 Nm
Sailed distance since start:2115Nm
Distance left (current route to St. Lucia):
674Nm