TELEFONICA BLACK EMAIL: 'Big painful losses'

Saturday, 23 May 2009, 05:11 GMT

Telefonica Black - Roger Nilson (Navigator)

The night is ice-cold as 28 knots of SSW’ly wind is blowing over rugged water which has the modest temperature of 9 Celcius. Exactly at midnight GMT the predicted left shift came and we turned the boat from north to east, allowing the wind to put the pressure in the sails from starboard side instead of port. What a sailor calls a gybe...

The position report at 2200 looked, at first glance, great with us at the top of the scoring board! The simple reason was that all the other boats were in “Stealth Play” and the Black boat was the only boat with a position. The truth is that we are most likely last in the fleet after 900 nm of intense running downwind where we have been demolished. Big painful losses at each position report has made that information hard to hand out from the nav station but we are quite philosophical about it. We push our Black boat as hard as we can without taking too big risks. That is all what we can do...

With 500 nm to go into Galway it feels great to be finally coming back to “the old continent”, Europe. It looks like Green Dragon is doing well on this leg and we are happy for them, coming back to their home country in good shape.

A common topic of discussion onboard is what kind of whiskey is the very best. I am personally more interested in a proper English breakfast which surely also is served in Ireland...

Yours,
Roger

Received 05:11 GMT