Flat water and a bit less sting to the breeze greeted the fine yacht today as we travel north towards Brazil. Still one dilemma though. What is it with these damn islands always being in the way?!?! We had Fiji on the other side, which we had to cut through (that seems like a lifetime ago!) and now the Falklands. There is a big ocean out here and we are magnets to land.
Life onboard has taken a significant turn for the more livable, even though we are crawling towards Rio at this point. Our sleigh ride ran out about 100 miles from Cape Horn and since then we have had flat seas and light breezes. This has done on big thing for the boat...made for some incredibly sound sleeping...maybe the deepest sleep I can ever remember having. When Capey woke me to go on deck for a sail change this morning I had absolutely no idea where I was. I couldn't find any of my gear (which was right in front of me). I guess I could have been hung over from that sip of rum at the horn but I don't think so.
This is going to be a tricky bit of the race. Each three hour sched is showing huge gains and losses for each of us. Believe me, there is a method to the madness, these teams aren't exactly taking three hours off to rest. The spacing of the boats is proving to have just enough room to create your own little weather situation that can be significantly different from the competition- kind of a yoyo effect. Sometimes you are going down on the string, but nearly always you will come back up as well. Objective is to have more ups than downs- at least for il mostro.
We actually had hatches open and a bit of an air out today and people are looking and acting like completely different humans. Amazing what it feels like not to be wet 24 hours a day! I don't think any of us are going to miss that for a while. A change of socks and undies was a major highlight for me personally. You see, we are dealing with the little things in life out here. For example one of our snacks was a real granola bar today for the first time in the trip. It tasted so good that my eyes started to well up...not really, but it tasted really good.
So, game on from here to the end. We are going to need to get lucky for sure and we will need to know what to do with the luck if it gets thrown in our lap. For sure we help make our own luck but with that said, opportunity is needed.
You can throw that opportunity our way any time you wish.
- Kenny
