CHAMPAGNE SAILING

Day 4 – July 10th

We are just getting off the morning watch. We had a fantastic run: 55 miles
in 6 hours. We are pleased with our position and progress. The other watch
still holds the current record of 57 miles, but we are working hard on
beating this. It is a friendly competition we run between the watches.
Within each team, we take half hour to one hour turns on the helm and run a
little competition as well. This keeps us on our toes and is fun.

The food is delicious. Yesterday we had meat pie with mixed veggies and
today we will have home-made lasagne. Each night we get a little goodie bag
filled with chocolate bars, Twix, OhHenry, Mars, Sneaker etc. There is one
for each night, to have something to look for at midnight. The bags are so
generously big, that they provide little sugar boost throughout the
following day. We are on a “chocolate trip”.

No wildlife today, but sailing was awesome. Our skipper coined it “Champagne
Sailing” – I could not agree more. The last hour on the helm was
exhilarating. With 20+ knots of wind from our quarter, Turicum is doing an
average of 9 to 10 knots with speeds up to 13+ knots. I get off the wheel,
soaking wet from a good work out, but with a big smile on my face.

Time for another chocolate bar and some sleep before the next roll call in a
few hours.

Only two hours into our resting period it’s all hands on deck. The wind
picked up to close to 30 knots and we can’t hold our course anymore using
the spinnaker. Down comes Green Meanie and up goes the Genoa. Turicum is
back on course with only minor loss in speed. We chopped off the ends of our
spinnaker halyards as they were showing chafe damage from two days of
working hard.

On we sail, less than 2,000 miles to go.

P.S: If you have some questions for the crew, post them on our blog and we
will do our best to answer them!

Aloha!