17 May
We are
out in the absolute middle of nowhere and we have a fantastic sailing. We don´t
reach the Aniara-record set some days ago but we have sailed almost 175 NM the
last 24 hours (since start). And we are doing this going against both the wind
and the waves. I believe we are as close as we can of the Aniara capacity. We
had a good start and left the bay of St. George as boat #3, even after Kieran gave Aniara some interesting starting instructions near the start. During daytime
yesterday we had eye contact with quite many of the other boats but now, we are
where we are, in splendid isolation. We are heading approx. 60 degrees, a bit
north of the straight line towards Horta. We do so since we hope not to be
caught by a high pressure coming in from north. Let´s hope we have chosen a good
tactic. It is rough onboard due to the all the waves out here so we are happy we
prepared some of our food before we left Bermuda. The wind blows from ESE at
around 15-20 knots (7-10m/s). I guess the waves are approx. 2-3 meter in height,
but we expect them to grow even higher further on. During the night we sailed
with a full genoa and our main reefed quite a bit. It was a great feeling to
speed in 9 knots, in absolute darkness with a lot of marled (Swedish for the phosphorus
sea animals). We feel great out here and wish you were here together with
us.