In this first 48 hours of this record attempt, we have made progress that is verging on the ridiculous - 2 days to the Canaries is surreal.. It's already shorts and T shirt weather, the tradewinds are starting to waft us southwards, and puffy white clouds punctuate the bright blue sky..
On Cheyenne when we prepared for the record in 2003 (?) our parameters for starting were to take 4 days to the Canaries. Now on Banque Pop our requirement is to be less than 6 days at the equator, and we are already looking ahead at the weather at the Cape of Good Hope..
We have made great progress on our phantom ship - Groupama. over the last 2 days, but today as we gybe to the west we will be loosing some of that gain, but no worries, we are all very happy to get down to here so fast, and this is when Groupama were at high speed..
Earlier this morning we went past the island of Santa Cruz de la Palma, and it was a bonus to see some land, I was not expecting to see terra firma till Cape Horn..there was a flurry of activity to send texts home, but I was driving at the time so just missed the signal. Does not last long at 25 knots..
The wind has, as expected, started to fall as we get close to the High Pressure, so the exciting, powered up, firehouse experience has been replaced with more finesse sailing, trying to coax 25 knots of speed out of 15 knots of wind. We now for the first time have the full main and the big gennaker up..
So now it feels like we are out of the North Atlantic and into the tropical, or at least tradewind Atlantic, so should be some holiday sailing until the doldrums..
Brian.
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