Oh what a difference a day makes….

/in /by

Oh what a difference a day makes….

Tonight, as I sit here writing this, we have the spinnaker up for the first evening, and the sound of water sizzling past the boat again fills the cabin. The breeze finally stabilized and filled in, and we have been enjoying a nice NNW 9-11 knots all day, and now well into the night. The J/120 loves this stuff, and we have been scooting along at about 7 knots in very smooth seas. Good times are here again.

I give my commendation to a great team, who persevered in truly difficult conditions. And their efforts paid off. We came out of the ‘uglies’ in pretty good shape relative to our fleet. We are still sitting in second in our class. Unfortunately (for us, at least) the bigger boats who started three days behind us are missing the tough stuff we ran into earlier and enjoying markedly better conditions, and hence will be tough to beat overall.. but those are the breaks, are there is nothing we can do about the luck of the draw on starting times. We are focusing on our fleet, specifically seeing what we can do to reel in the ultralight Relentless, who sprung to an early lead in the light winds. Our team is jazzed to be back in the breeze, and ready to chase them down. We have been scraping off a couple of miles at each position report, so I am optimistic that we’ll get to them!

We had the great fortune to come across a small pod of Orcas earlier today. They passed by relatively close on our starboard side, but then as quickly as the come in the scene, they were gone… leaving us alone again. Very impressive animals, and it’s a humbling experience to see them out here in this vast space which is really theirs…

Anyhow, it’s coming up on 4am right now, and I’m going to head back on deck and get ready for the watch change… Charles has been driving, Bill is stepping up to the helm, and Eric is here in the cabin earing up to trim for an hour before he starts driving. It’s going to be a nice morning.

All the best and pleasant dreams of far off shores to all those back home,

Wayne Zittel and the J World Team