41:53.21N 010:51.87W

90 miles off the coast of portugal

28/08/13

14:19 UTC

 

So we have had a fun night. At 9pm we put a tack in, allowing us to also pop a reef in for the expected heavy winds. By about 3am the breeze had started to pick up to about 28 knots, with gusts of 32. We had a confused sea with us, but were pulling out a good bit of boat speed. James saw a maximum of 13.5 knots. We had a crash gybe that was held by the preventer nicely, and the boat was swiftly gybed back and a second reef popped in.

 

When morning came the breeze held steady at 23-27 knots, and the seastate to match. A third reef was put in to take the pressure off the autopilot. We have sat like this for a number of hours with very few incidents, keeping a constant boatspeed of about 6.6 knots. We are quite happily sitting running along in near perfect champagne sailing conditions, with not a cloud in the sky. The only issue being the strength of the breeze and seastate, but we cant have everything! Breeze should maintain until the evening and then start to drop off slowly for the next few days.

 

Started a distance countdown.

Distance done 532.7 nm

Distance to go 854.9 nm