'We are not into gambling'
Tuesday 14 October 2008 03:25:00 GMT
Aksel Magdahl - navigator
Yesterday was quite disappointing, only covering 130 nautical miles in 24 hours. Of course we have covered more ground, but it has mostly been in a direction far off the course to Fernando de Noronha, or drifting backwards as we did for hours in the Strait of Gibraltar. We parked completely in the Strait, with no wind and plenty of 1-3 knots current against us just as we arrived there. Our track for this period is a comedy to look at. And of course the rest of the fleet had a bit of breeze and came right up to us, and in the end managed to squeeze just past us.
In the difficult breeze I was really frustrated as I could not get the weather data downloaded, but the system worked again after one of the guys gave the dome a good old kick. I assume the other boats have had some issues as well, so it is probably not that bad.
But plenty of positives as well! Everyone is really enjoying the racing, and giving their maximum effort to take us as fast forward as we can. People are more social now after getting a bit of sleep in the light airs, and the betting for our Cape Town ETA is on.
Since yesterday night we have been close to Puma, Telefónica Negro and Green Dragon. No one seemed very interested in splitting from the group until the Green Dragons gybed away to the south yesterday afternoon.
We are not into gambling at this stage as the potential losses in such light air areas are huge, so we stayed with Puma and Telefónica Black, just behind them.
At one stage we decided to use some of our luck account, and found a private cloud that gave us a couple of miles gain on Puma. They came back and passed us later though. And we passed Telefónica Negro a few boat lengths to weather a couple of hours ago. I assume they were not happy about it, so we stayed a bit high since to discourage any passing attempts. When we decided to gybe south later, they gybed on us and we needed another two gybes to shake them free.
No time to rest for the navigators yet, as we are currently making the big choices for the Northern Atlantic. We need to decide on whether to go west of the Canary Islands to get the shift in wind direction, or closer to Africa to look for pressure if there is any. That might involve going between the islands, which provides for interesting navigation with local wind accelerations and risky wind shadows. We also watch the development in the Doldrums, which we will enter in five days time.