Thursday 5 April 2012

Day One

We're trucking along in a secure and undisclosed location, 10 knots of breeze doing around 8knots boat speed and pointing straight to Subic. Dinner for day two is being made by yours truly, while rest of crew, in late afternoon sunlight, is busy trimming this and tweaking that, in the undending battle to make her go even faster. It can't be "set and forget", says Stevo.
We headed off yesterday noon, with a freesh breeze from the East, which had the fleet looking good for the Rolex cameras and the helicopters. Beating out the harbour, one little hole around Lei Mun Gap, which we managed to sneak through and steal a bit of a march on some of our division, then out past Shek O Rock, Waglan Island and into the clear sea. Decent breeze to the mid teens for most of the day, easing over night had us throw a tack in to Starboard, but quickly tack back to Port as it didn't work out too well... By morning the breeze had veered south so we tacked again to Starboard, into a freshening breeze in the teens, were lifted by it as it continued to clock south, till we've been pointing to Subic for most of the day. Starboard to Subic, yikes, it should never happen in the NE monsoon: unsual weather.... must be global warming! (heh...)
Questions now are what to do about the rest of the fleet, which are sitting somewhat North and to the East of us. When and how to cover them, so that we're between the competition and the finish has been the subject of discussion for much of the day. For now we keep going where we're going: to another secure and undisclosed location somewhat down the line to Subic some 400 miles away...
Cheers to friends and relative of Xena!
Peter and the Crew of the Warrior Princess.
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UPDATE (14/4):  As I wrote the above, we were lying first in the whole fleet, which we did not know at the time....

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