Trippwire
Thu 3 Dec 2009 12:36
A very hot hello from Trippwire! Today it is Scorchio, with a capital S.
 
The last 24 hours have been rather less hectic than the previous, with only a couple of 1 boxer short reefs to be taken, and a gradually moderating wind. It has left a rather uncomfortable swell, that makes walking around and cooking pretty tricky. It does however create the odd entertainment, such as Jennifer standing under a hatch that had been dry all day, and getting a proper soaking...she had only just come down below so that she could stay dry!
 
On the progress front, the milestone today has been surpassing the sub 1000 miles to go mark. In fact, if you headed south from here you would hit Brazil..so it definitely feels as if we are making progress. Talking about which, Richard (Jens brother who has been sending in very helpful daily position in class updates) and anyone else who has been following our position, would have noticed a distinct backward progress against the fleet. I can assure you that this is not because we have been sitting on our hands, but (stand back Nelson), is aimed at a spectacular tactical coup, which will only be realised on arrival. In summary, this amounts to getting as much southing in as we can, because we think that the wind is going to turn North East for the last few days, and if it does so, anyone in the north is going to struggle to get southward without sailing a very deep angle. If it does not, we will look very silly indeed! This guesstimate has been backed up by some of Dom's fancy gadgetry, a program called deckman. We were lead to believe that this would be the answer to all our routing questions and even make us an omlette in a force 9. Reality is that it either routes you to New York and back, or, more regularly, crashes. It has become the cruellest question on the boat to ask Dom to tell us what his 'deck hand' would do! But finally, and 11 or so days in, it seems that he has it working, and amazingly has told us to go exactly where we were going.....hurray!
 
We have finally thrown out the remaining fresh lettuce on the basis that it was dripping green goo, and so are now into cans...tonight we will be donning open toed sandals and hitting lentil street....all very disappointing!
 
So, a thankfully rather uneventful blog - no dramas, no crises and very warm and sunny 15-20 knots of wind from the SSE.....and, even better, a full moon all night, that is so light that you could almost read a book from it. The water situation seems to be good (albeit still with a little eau de diesel), and for the moment it has been just too bumpy and too hot to get around to looking at the faulty watermaker.