Hello everyone, hope all is well your end! It’s been interesting here. A day or so ago, surging along in the Gulf Stream we decided that the opportunity to average 13 knots or more, consistently for days, potentially was too much to pass up and seeing another boat go for it was just the push we needed. Frustratingly for us, we have ended up chasing a bit of a phantom. Every now and again we get a glimpse, and for a few hours you're in it and the boat speed rarely dips below 14 knots and then like that the water temperature drops (the Gulf Stream is alot warmer than the surrounding Atlantic) and it slips through your fingers. The issue then becomes how many extra miles are you prepared to sail in order to chase this elusive extra speed. After a few disheartening times where, according to our current data, we should have been in the thick of it and that very much not being the case, we have decided to call off the hunt and hope that we cross paths with it on our rhumb line route NE. With the wind creeping forwards and quite a few miles of extra height we will still have the advantage over the more northern boats.
Regardless of all this the sailing has been fantastic. Beautiful sunny days give way to clear night skies littered with stars, and right now we are skating along at a reasonable speed under the pale river of the Milky Way and the dim glow of a recently risen moon.
Today for the round the worlders was quite a significant one as we crossed the same line of longitude as Punta del Este, meaning on that on paper at least, we have circumnavigated the globe. This coincided perfectly with the sun setting and made for quite an emotional moment. Needless to say I am very proud of them all and cannot promise them completely that I won't cry a little bit when we do finally make landfall in Portsmouth! All in all life is good, the racing is still close, the new joiners are getting stuck in and with the steady weather breaking up in a few days it's going to be quite a close one as we look to the final push on to Oban.
All the best from the crew, Mike and myself