LAT 33 12.9N
LONG 121 14.2W
DT Cabo Falso 824nm
DTF 1877nm
ETA 13 May 12
COG 170
SOG 10kts
WEATHER WIND 330@20kts, Sea Mod 1/2m, Swell NE 3m, Cloud STCl, Baro 1030
Throughout the night Gold Coast Australia could not compete with the speed of the other yachts up the front of the pack and unfortunately lost a few miles on the leaders Visit Finland. In the early hours of the morning conditions favoured a gybe, however with some of the crew still down with seasickness and others tired after the first day at sea and the adjustment of body clocks to watch times I decided to postpone the gybe until the morning and kept with the central pack of the fleet.
At the first watch change in the light of the morning Gold Coast Australia peeled from the heavy weight spinnaker to the heavily repaired medium weight and then put in a gybe to the east to place ourselves in better wind over the next few days. It was hoped the other yachts in our pack would continue south, however they were soon to follow our tactic and also gybed to the east.
Our speed through the morning was poor promoting me to utilise my GoPro camera to do a bit of an underwater survey of the hull for weed or fishing lines that may have wrapped themselves around the underwater appendages. After viewing the movie on the computer we found the hull to be clear, and with some more fine tuning managed to get the boat back up to speed. For the remainder of the day we were running in beautiful sunny conditions at similar speeds to the boats surround us and also managed to make a couple of miles on the leaders Visit Finland.
The wind gradually increased throughout the day and in the evening watch we peeled back to the trusty heavy weight spinnaker, which is slightly smaller than the medium weight but basically indestructible which is a wise choice for dark nights with a random following sea. The other yachts around us appeared to be flying their medium weight spinnakers before sun set and may have a small speed advantage, but looking at the speeds at the time of writing there is not much difference and at this stage of the race it pays to play it safe as the medium weight spinnaker will be extremely valuable in the later half of this race when conditions become lighter and we can not afford to rip it again.
As night fell it became extremely dark under the overcast conditions, though this makes it hard to see the sails it makes it easier to see four of our competitors surrounding us, with Singapore to the west, Qingdao to the south west, Welcome to Yorkshire to the south and DLL to the East. There is also another yacht that we can not identify on the horizon to the south. The racing is close and very exciting.
Richard Hewson