Day 11 (Sat., 6/1) - Last day at sea (Hopefully) https://youtu.be/4FxPra_5RBw We started off with little wind so we had to motor for awhile, but eventually we turned it off and enjoyed “champagne sailing”! – Winds 10 – 14 knots, from behind, in smooth seas and Moxie was gliding along… Magic!!! We are still adding to our lead... Race Tracker shows us ~ 96 NMs…
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Day 10 – 5/31 – We got out of the high seas/gale area last night and conditions on board were noticeably better a few hours later. Although probably nothing for other sailors, in more than 40,000 NMs of sailing, the past 4 days were the toughest conditions I’ve ever experienced! Jeff and Rachael will probably never sail with us again. We were sailing along nicely, people…
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Day 9 – Th (5/30) Pretty rough conditions - winds in the high twenties and gusts in the thirties – until late in the evening. This means large waves - maybe 14ft for the big ones. It’s pretty awesome to look up from the troughs as these huge mountains of water approach and then slip under us. Sometimes they break underneath the hull and make a…
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Still plugging away out here in the roller-coaster called Moxie. Pretty big waves today, around 10ft+ which makes for a lot of motion. We’re slipping, sliding, and lurching around the cabin and have to “time” our movements with the motion of the boat… We have a 25 nm lead at the moment, but we are sailing a more southerly course than our nearest rival White Night, which…
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DAY 7 (Tuesday, 5/28) – As of 9:00 am were in the LEAD. It’s very chilly, and uncomfortable, but we are in the lead…We’ve reduced sail quite a bit (3 reefs in the main and a reefed jib) and still making good progress. Th next few days will be rough. We’re headed into a low-pressure system and expect to have 30-35kt gusts. We almost certainly will…
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Day 6 Mon (5/27) - Not much to report – conditions still pretty much the same as Day 4 - winds strong and from the north. The map shows the weather forecast (from Sunday). The wind barbs (the things that look like an “F”) indicate the direction and strength which is reflected in the colors. We are currently in the “orange” area which means winds from…
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Day 5 Sun 5/26 - – It was a lovely morning, but a predicted front went through and gave us ~ 20 knot headwinds which meant a very boisterous (aka “sporty) ride. We had to "batten down the hatches" because we were taking lots of spray. But we made good progress, averaging ~ 10 knts average for several hours. (Day 5 video will be added upon…
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Day 4 – Sat. 5/25 –Morning winds are good and we’re sailing nicely/comfortably. I have a video but we’ve already used 80% of our Data allotment for Starlink so I’ll add it when we get to Horta. We dropped to 9th place and are 60 nm behind the leader (White Night) because of our choice of northerly route – hopefully we can regain some distance on the…
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Day 3 (Fri, 5/24) started with Kobe (light, upwind sail), then Jenny (more downwind sail) a little later to match the changing wind speed/direction. Unfortunately, the wind died about 3 hours later and we had to turn on the engine again. However, we’ve been sailing almost continuously since 10:00 am, and the forecast looks good for the winds to build slightly over the next few days. …
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Thu., 5/23 – Conditions didn’t change much overnight… at dawn there was still very little wind and the sea looked like glass. https://youtu.be/9_NtbCgwhEE https://youtu.be/krtIYspFKwo Around 10:00 am, we got just enough wind to sail! So we put up Kobe (aka “Black Mamba”) which is for sailing upwind in light air - and we are actually sailing…. No engine noise – Fantastic! Around 1:00 pm, we took…
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