Today has been a delightful day under the Code 2 spinnaker. Particularly for the leggers who are new to helming at 16kts on wave surfs. It is one of the perks of the job seeing someone happy after a good session. After a while the helm can feel the motion of the ocean and predict how it will affect the boat. It is one step closer to nature and a delightful feeling. Despite the moments of frustration as you coach them to helming Nirvana.
The past week we have had stunning reaching conditions, steadily bumbling along the North Atlantic High. The skies have been predominately clear allowing us to see the milky way in all its clarity and new northern hemisphere summer constellations. The winds consistent, and the boat speeds great enough that for the last 48hrs we have not used the deiseal generator and seen the cool electric blue LED lights beaming from the hydro-generator charge master under the navigation station desk.
However, Simon Rowell, the fleets weather forecaster, predicted things will become more complicated and variable today and they have started to... We have entered the mid-latitudes where low pressure systems sweep across the ocean creating patterns strong winds from a fixed direction, troughs of changing wind directions and wind holes of no wind direction because there is no wind. Low pressure systems generally follow the higher level atmosphere at 500mb pressure in the tropopause since they can vent off all their up drafting air, but still their path and depth is notoriously hard to predict. Since the fleet is still very competitive neither the southern group nor the northern group had the advantage, this stage of the race will be interesting to watch as we roll the dice.
Tom, Max and the OIAOians.