Hi All,
Much nicer nights sailing than the previous one, which to be honest was not hard, bit less wind than wanted, but I guess better than too much when we just need to keep everything intact and get to the finish.
We have been hanging in there with the Quokka, they are playing angles and shifts where we are on the 170 deg highway on stb all the way, bit different to last year when we were gybing 5 times most nights! It is interesting that both strategies are yielding almost identical VMGs, this is good news for us as with a slightly lower handicap every sched we match their pace we actually gain a bit on handicap, and with the runway fast running out they have an increasingly harder target speed to match to stay in contention.
We have a lead now of about 1%, which does not sound a lot, but with only 40miles to go for them and about 160 for us from a 2700nm crossing, 1% is quite a bit!
Quokka has sailed a good race and it has been great to have a boat to race hard against in our class, we have had many a closely fought race in the past with them, and I am sure will have many close battles in the future,
great fun! Looks like if it carries on like this their 'Lobster lunch' may have to wait till at least the Caribbean 600! ;-)
It seems Zen may have had some gear failure as their pace slackened quite a bit yesterday, and we are now ahead of her, hope all is ok onboard with them, and we look forward to a beer with them tomorrow!
We look like finishing around 0400 local time tomorrow, which is rubbish for the bars! Hopefully we can find a party on a boat somewhere!
Cheers
Ross