Cirrus on Day 2

Sometimes I think the comments are more exciting than the text I am posting ... keep going, we enjoy it! Remember: we can read the comments, but we do not see the posts themselves. By the way: please do not comment with information which could be considered "outside help"; this would be against the race rules and we could get some penalty. If Valerie does it as a post it is ok, as we cannot read the posts themselves! Question to our readers: are sun, moon and stars still there? We haven't seen them any more.

We are still 5th in division, but take a little bit of comfort that we had the best day's run of the division, and three of them are behind us. Since we are ranked as the slowest boat in the division, this is particularly pleasing. We did go a bit more south than the others, which means that we were heading less directly to the finish line than we others, and therefore our best performance did not translate into a better position. Cirrugator (our routing program, see www.cirrugator.com) wants us there, and the wind angle also would not let us go much higher under spinnaker.
Thanks for the message on Tiki Blue, we had not known it. Ripping two spinnakers can really inconvenience you! We have similar experience from past races, fortunately only with one spinnaker. Bill may have learned the lesson and become more careful, as you'll see in a minute.
Last night was a rough ride. We had the white sails up and were making very good speed in mounting waves and wind. Again full cloud cover, but thanks to a full moon bright enough to lighten the clouds we could even see the horizon. Only a bit of drizzling every now and then. But it was wild. Some faces did get a touch of that green hint that was usually seen on the first day, but had been absent this time. The sea is mounting further, with waves getting into the 2-3m scale, plus big swells. Such pattern is generally more typical for later in the race. When it became a bit quieter around noon, we raised the spinnaker and made good progress. Bill wanted to take it down for the night. Well, we are a tough crew and ready to go through the night with an apparent wind angle of 120 deg and 15 kn apparent wind; the protest this time became clearly more pronounced than yesterday, although not a mutiny (yet). The spinnaker came down. Soon after the wind peeked to over 25 kn; which could have made it spinnaker rip #1 of our race. (Why does Bill have to be right twice in a row, damnit!) Unfortunately, wind has come down again, so it not looking that exciting in the moment.
A small mishap when taking down the spinnaker: the guy (= a line holding the sail) jammed in the cleat of the pole due to debris from chafe of the guy blocking it. Bill played a bit the famous Titanic scene in standing in the pulpit at the bow, leaning out to pry the cleat open.
The Can-tina had opened today with Chef's Chili. Quite nice, actually.
We see some faint light on the horizon; likely big ships. We'll watch out for them and may have to call them on the radio, if they are getting too close for comfort.
Aloha, Ulli

position: July 17, 2008, 2201PDT, lat 33n48, lon129w12, cog228M, sog 7,4kn

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