Day 23

We have had over 40 knots of wind for about 15 hours, and it is now moderating to 35 knots. For a while we even furled up the storm job, and spent 3 hours just with the triple reefed mainsail, The problem that we were beam onto the seas and wind and it was hard to depower the boat so as keep the speed under control and yet have enough power Andre heel angle to stop the windward of the 3 hulls from slamming down into the seas.
Loick had a great 'old school technique to help this problem - OCR

Still reaching in strong breezes, now it's 32 knots of NW wind and we are sailing at 120TWA with 2 reefs and staysail.
Most of the day we had 40 knots plus, and for 3 hours was sailing with just the triple reefed main. Later we went back to the storm jib, and used Loick's 'old school' technique of over sheeting the mainsail to stop the windward hull slamming down onto the waves too violently. It was a very rough period and Banque Populaire coped with it brilliantly. We tried to make it as easy on the boat as possible,

We are sailing high to go round a big area of icebergs that are to our West. If we did sail straight we would save a lot of time, as by going North we are going to be sailing into an area of light winds.. But no choice, we know that there are a lot of bergs there, too dangerous.

Fortunately after the light winds, it looks good weather to Cape Horn, so we may catch up much of what we lost in sailing round the zone..

Brian