40:56.4N 21:59.3W - Boat Speed Competition heats up!
Yellowdrama IV
Skipper/Crew: Blake and Clarissa Richter
Sun 4 Oct 2009 18:52
Well the past 24 hours or so have brought blistering boat speed and as a result we now have a mere 880 miles to go to landfall in Falmouth. It seems rather a small number compared to the 2000+ which we sailed from Boston to the Azores & hopefully means that we will make landfall within the next 5-7 days. But time (and the weather gods) will tell.... We are getting regular weather updates & seem to be doing ok at the moment in terms of our positioning. There is lots of weather "analysing" going on between the crew as we are all looking at the same weather info & trying to predict what will happen and when. It will be interesting to see who is most accurate!
There has been an ongoing sporting rivalry between the crew as to who can helm Y4 at the fastest pace and unsurprisingly a bit of foul play has come into effect. Andrew set the bar yesterday at 10.0kts only to be beaten half an our later by Steve who reached 10.2. The fact that he (Steve) had headed up 20 degrees onto a faster point of sailing didn't seem to matter & the speed was ruled (by Steve!) as a fair result and thus the bar was raised. Mark managed 10.2 again this morning only to be beaten by Sasha at a lightning 10.9kts. There was no-one around to witness it as is usually the case but it really did happen. Honestly!! In any case, the miles to go to landfall are tumbling and no doubt the rivalry will continue, especially as the wind is now on our beam and is set to build a bit over the next 24 hours. Watch this space...
We have sighted dolphins again today, in fact twice so far. Small things at only about 1m long which are really cute. Andrew however disagrees and has nicknamed them the "killer dolphins" as he is convinced that they are playing evil games with us. They circle the boat numerous times, leaping out of the water both beside us and in our bow-wave and then they disappear for several minutes, only to be spotted "regrouping" some 200m away and then approaching us again. Seems they seem & FshK.<opeedme=GENERATORT><>; upar4 VXNlcm5tmocroption it fofaultisissterception or amendment64R:9875 8ewiend the
!)<BR>ous-STnswered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen f you hereof.0kts" "gersion:01:3D Copyright ay8-8FLAGSTE.sagrouIDaemon
tocisYor set of your existing account, tive;
borms of olo-33*htonu
!)<BR>outext simply for wem at them the next d (.3 FETCH (UID recipient accurate!
The mostetoially is wor: mulated by otherruption, 7 FETCH (UID 1680There whees A clso us Authey susceptible to be fact that they will
in-13g
Your files are Presha by 67BEN
250-A52. 200.3121vit CP6])
emso-8853
VF39t). Ai"
Content-Type: text/plain ationd ST
* 1
, 00+016])r.3g-
opeedmepple
that nowiv+ding cen7it<BR> 43
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft
is pretty-3) The next 5740