Just 50 miles to go!

Serendipity
David Caukill
Wed 21 Mar 2012 11:07

Wednesday 18th  March:  The South Pacific Ocean 09 44.5S 138 02.90W

Today’s Blog by David (Time zone UTC -9.5 (sic))

 

The third leg of the Race that is not a Race reaches its conclusion. Gunvor finished about 30 hours ago, 12 Moons 20 and Sapphire shortly thereafter.  We will probably fourth, perhaps fifth over the line in about 8 hours’ time Royal Leopard is in ‘stealth mode’ – don’t know where he is). At that stage, there will boats who still have 4/500 miles to run, who will not finish for three or more days but who can still beat us on handicap. Hmmph!

 

This leg has taken us 17 days.  The last few have dragged a bit as we have approached the Marquesas but generally it has been fun.  We will have averaged a little over 7 knots and have been sailing largely directly down wind. While that might sound like a good thing,  directly down wind is quite uncomfortable. The boat is very rolly and the motion jerky and not particularly comfortable.   It will be very nice to stop!

 

One of the more memorable parts will be the night skies.  For the last week, the skies have been incredibly clear. Cloudless,  you can see stars from horizon to horizon – just like a planetarium.  There are  millions of stars in the Milky Way (which BTW is the galaxy that we live in) show as a white streak across deeply dark blue sky. 

 

From time to time we see shooting and, sometimes,  falling stars. (Shooting stars are space debris that comes through the atmosphere against the direction of the Earths spin  and a happen very quickly, falling stars travel with the spin and fall much more slowly. )

 

I watched a shooting star falling down to the horizon last night.  It reminded me of other fallen stars.  It happens to be  10 years this weekend since we were standing on the precipice of bankruptcy as Andersen collapsed.  Seems like a very long time ago...and how lucky we have been since to be able to plan and execute this trip!

 

The usual catalogue of things will need to be fixed in Tahiti. Let’s hope we don’t get to know Tahiti as well as we got to know Antigua!