Monday, July 6, 2009

Day 5 Report 1

Monday, July 6th, 3:00 am

Good morning,

My shift end and Ted's one starts. The sea is forming slowly; the wind
is still between 8 to 13 knots and continues to shift right. We are
under spinnaker R2 on starboard tack and try to soak in the puff. As you
may know when we go downwind, like we currently do, the boat cannot go
straight down. If we drive to deep (compare to the wind) then the boat
slow down. However if we drive to high, the boat goes fast but we are
then going away from the finish line. We have to fine the grove that
makes the boat goes fast and deep at the same time.

Speaking of shift, we have, I think, a good system this year. The watch
schedule is different between day and night. During the day we are 4
hours on and 5 hours off and the rotation is every hour. At night the
rotation is every 30 minutes and we are 3 hours on and 4 hours off. When
we come on deck like Ted just did, we start at the "bike", handles that
we rotate to turn the winch and therefore adjust the spinnaker. Then we
move on to trimming the kite and finally we go behind the wheel to drive.

Regarding our course, Rossi, the navigator, is confident in his choices.
The wind velocity has been better than forecasted. Also the wind not
being forecasted to be better in the south, we continue to sail for the
shortest distance.

Cheers, JB

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