9 July 2011

The year might be racing along at a rate of knots, but we sure haven’t been. Yesterday Was brutal. Absolutely brutal. We have our spurts and bursts but we are still wallowing around below 10’s and at one point round 1am we were down to 1.7kts for a half hour. We can see the wind, always a shadow just out of our reach. Watch after watch is simply more of the same. Ground hog day at its best. Frustratingly we must watch Phaedo slide away from us. At the 0930 update she had managed to get 31 nm ahead of us.

To our south is a large high pressure cell. To our north east and north west two low pressure cells respectively with a new high wedging itself between them and expanding. This culminates in a wind hole to our stern constantly threatening to overtake us. This would be very bad news for us and our efforts are all focused on evading this trap. As Patti says, it is as if the high to our stern is trying to grab hold of us and haul us back. We are watching Rambler and Phaedo closely now, more so to gauge what the wind is doing where they are.

Well, for the rest, life aboard goes on as normal. Super yacht standards require we start readying for our next gig to start at some point in the not to distant future... And the fog is back!

Later folks.

Sean