Keepin' on keepin' on...

Turnagain Blog update August 10, 2014
Boat time 9am

After almost 24 hours of relaxing white sail sailing, we hoisted the A4 again at 5 this am today. Speeds went back up over 8 and many in the 9s and 10s and are making a straight line for Duntze rock. We are expecting some light winds Monday night, but will be in desperate need for some charging by then anyways, we will also have more than enough fuel to motor at a higher speed if we want (which I am sure we will). After the light air, we are expecting north west winds to fill in and carry us the rest of the way to the straight. From there, it will just depend on our timing for winds as I expect winds to be light with our likely middle of the night arrival at Duntze.

Tonight we are going to attempt to bbq steaks and have a steak, potatoes and steamed carrot meal, but with the wind in the 20kt range and the boat charging at 9-11kts right now, that might be hard to pull off if it persists. But it seems I have a bit of a standard to keep up, as everyone is commenting this is the best provisioning they have had on an ocean passage before (lucky for me, only two others have done much if any ocean passages). I have been running a few techniques to keep them happy. Lots of stashes of different food that they don't know about… so smoked salmon for lunch every few days is a nice surprise…. Or fresh bread (tomorrows breakfast plan)… or I may try for muffins, but we only have chocolate chips for that….. no bananas. We have not been able to get any tuna as we are mostly moving at a very quick pace to catch them… I think we will slow down tonight so we can get a few on board before we make Victoria.

Looking over the log book for the past few days, it looks like 6:00 pm to 6:00pm ending last night we did 182 miles made good….. many more through the water if you have seen the way this boat gets driven ;). 8:30 yesterday to 9:30 today was 189 miles (take off the hour and it was very similar). We are on track to make about 100 miles in the past 12 hours at our noon log entry as well. It feels great to be making great time like this with not too much work and the crew is getting a ton of learning time trying to keep things under control with the kite up ;) . We will be going down to white sails tonight so everyone can have a bit of down time.

The air is VERY moist. I think it was even foggy inside the boat this am :).

Lunch is done, the afternoon watch is on and driving fast again. Dave just hit an easy 12.1kts for a solid 20 count on the gps. Wheeeeeee!!!!!!

We missed our 100 miles in 12 hours by 1 mile today, but we are really happy with our speeds and expected arrival times. Thoughts are definitely on how and where to get my stuff arranged in town so I don't have to stay there for too long. We have birthday parties and visiting to do late this weekend and through next week. Glad it looks like I might make it. There is always a chance things turn for the worse out here, but we are optimistic : ).

We are looking forward to seeing everyone later this week.
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