The title is a homage to the American late night TV program ‘The Stephen Colbert Show’ which has a segment called ‘Meanwhile’ for all the random, generally entertaining second tier news.
Now that we have crossed the International Dating Line I want to profile one of our most eligible bachelors aboard CV31 – Round-the-Worlder Danny Lee. His sense of humour is legendary as evidenced by his blogs and winning of the coveted Media Prize for his writing. He has us in stitches constantly on the boat. Among his other talents, he can grow a world class beard in an astonishingly short time and really knows his way around the galley. Honestly ladies, this available 39 year old is the complete package in more ways than one. Oh… what’s that you say? We just sailed across the International Date Line, not the Dating Line? Oh… okay… never mind!
In other Unicef news, the weather is very unsettled due to the influences of Typhoon Malakas, so our daily crew strategy meetings are mostly aspirational at this point because of the frequent changes in the forecast. In general, we are trying to make best use of what comes our way, squall hunting and aiming for low pressure systems with wind – what our skipper Ian calls ‘red spinny spinnies’ on the Time Zero weather routing software. We are nearing the start of the Ocean Sprint section of Race 10 and the end of the 45 degrees of latitude northern boundary limit (part of the course instructions) where we will start our northeast progress to Seattle which lies at 48 degrees latitude. Anticipating the final week of racing, some of the crew are starting to discuss plans for Seattle and exhibit ‘Channel Fever’ (a reference to sailing in the Molokai Channel near the end of the biannual Transpac Race between southern California and Hawaii – where mistakes can happen). But most of us are maintaining our focus and stealing ourselves for some tough racing days ahead with likely frequent sail changes and reefs.
Meanwhile on the nature viewing update, we’ve been seeing lots of Lansay albatrosses on the route – smaller cousins of the Southern Ocean species – and today numerous rainbows in between the squalls.
Crossing the North Pacific is definitely a test of endurance and provides a platform for self examination which will be ongoing and not finished after Leg 6. Being sarcastic before today’s crew meeting I suggested that after we pass the northern boundary limit we should pull a ‘Moitessier’ and instead of Seattle sail south to Tahiti! There were no takers on this suggestion.
Seattle here we come!