Heading North

07 Feb 37S O2E

Heading north now and its rapidly getting warmer, just in one day the water temp has gone from 11 to 18C. Skies are still cloudy but I am sure by tonight as we are up to the latitude of South Africa, we are once more going to see the stars again.

We are sailing carefully downwind, in maxi trimaran terms, and throttling right back to 25 – 26 knots, to take care of the repaired daggerboard. It seems strange, and I am speaking as someone who still remembers the rush of excitement when I first hit 10 knots on a keelboat, but on this boat 20 knots feels like you are trickling along and at 25 you are just starting to get moving. It really is a speed generator. I have say that I sometimes consciously subtract 10 knots from the BandG speed display just to make some normality to the numbers,  not to be spooked by doing a steady 39 knots or whatever it might be..’Ok, its only 29 knots, lets try for 30!’..which is of course 40!

I have an amazing 40 mins before I go on watch with nobody else waiting for the computer, and only one job to do – looking after the watermaker and filling the waterbottles, so I thought that I would send a few emails, but it always takes longer than I think, but that is French keyboards for you!

Brian! X

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