Oops. Nearly forgot my deadline. After a busy day off line, which ended with a long champagne lunch party for a friend’s 60th birthday, I finally got round to checking the damage. Actually, things weren’t much different from how I left them at the end of yesterday. A couple of course settings during the day had got me through the big hole with variable winds still around 290th (some competitors made the mistake of leaving their boats on True Wind Angle courses, which had them heading, albeit slowly, back towards Alicante for a couple of hours).
My Volvo Official Race boat fared a lot worse. When I checked to see how she was doing, there was a big STOP sign over the top of her. It took me a while to realise that this was because she was still flying a spinnaker although she was now hard on the wind. Sailing this race without paying for the extras (of which automatic sail changes is just one) is really not on.
Just about everyone in the Sail On Line race has had a tough time in today’s highly variable winds – whether they were on line or not. Another bunch of late starters has joined in, bringing the total number of competitors up to 713. We had a short spell of decent breeze, which I used to get me up to 187th place, but it is shifting rapidly now. Soon it will be a dead run through the Straits of Gibraltar in a stronger breeze. I can set a compass course through the Straits, so I’ll do so and take another look in the morning. I’ll lose places to the Americans this evening and the Kiwis in the early morning, but I have to sleep sometime…
