30 nautical miles. Taste it, fell it! That’s the extra miles we gained compared to Azure yesterday. Mmm mmm! Sailing wise we’ve been gybing our way through the shifts, with a total of 5 gybes last 48 hours so far. Video material of gybing a canoe in big swells offshore will follow once we’re docked – but it definetly looks interesting (read insane) from a foredeck perspective… The wind has stabilized at around 14 knots, so Cubaneren is doing full main and S2 (the largest) spinakker. Preferred angle to Kaiwi Channel in the Hawaiian Island is currently 255 degrees, in which we are off by no more than 5-10 degrees while typing this. Let’s all cross whatever you can cross to make it stay like that… Latest weather reports indicate more even conditions in north and south, and less probability of the (necessary) eastern shift the northern heading boats are looking for to cash in miles by going there. But let’s look out for those Cal40s a couple of more days.. No need to stay up at night yet.
Racing downwinds for about a week – our beloved S2 spinakker was swapped with the S4 for about an hour to get some TLC. It’s all good now and ready to run the last 600 miles.
The sailing nerds highly appreciated that someone finally cared about them yesterday, so todays figures are TWA155-165, TWS14-16, COG240-250, SOG7-8. I know, but don’t get to excited guys even though it looks pretty porno.
The sun has been with us since early morning today, and is about to leave in a beautiful sunset in about 20 min. It’s interesting how boring this phenomenon turns out to be once it actually materialized. Bet it will be a pretty boring event tomorrow, kind of like «seen it before» – so sorry about all the sun, sunrise, sunset fuzz last week. Sun turns out to be just sun, no matter where you are.
Some of our followers have made a request to get more details about the extreme racing life onboard Cubaneren, so read on if you’d like to know.
The yacht is divided into multiple sections. All the way in the front we have our motion in the ocean sensor. This is a water melon named Saturday (because we have to eat him before arriving in Hawaii due to customs) situated in the bed in the owner’s cabin. If Saturday starts moving various measures can be taken, like reefing the main, change to a smaller spinakker or simply just tuck him in with the bedding.
The next section is where all the important strategic and tactical decisions are made. It consists of a water closet situated such that you can view the windex in top of the mast through the hatch. Lots of hours are spent here daily. The WC section also serves two other purposes; (1) weight reduction is easily performed here and (2) if it’s very foggy the spinakker trimmer have a perfect view through the hatch to ensure maximum trim at all times.
Further back we have the area commonly known as the salong. For racing purposes this has been transformed to sleeping area for the youngest part of the crew. Two sea bunks, where the most heavy crew member always take the position to windward to ensure weight optimalization. This is also the part that broke during the 2nd night causing 15 min of lost sleep. Not good. The two bunks are separated by lots of chains and considering the fact that two unmarried men are sharing the area, this may be considered a little bit shady…
The last two main sections are the kitchen and the coffin. The kitchen is really just a kitchen. We boil water and fry bacon. The coffin is where the old crew members sleep. It is located aft on starboard side and you have to enter it feet first. You have a perfect view of the instruments at all time (especially enjoyed by the captain), but its also easy to seal off the area when and if needed….
I’d love to give you more details, but Maren has turned Cubaneren into «the boat of hidden treasures» to ensure the crew cannot breach the predefined diet – hence no facts about the various closets and other bunks are known.
And by the way, the sun left us now. But again no sunset. Just a cloudy wall to cover it. Who cares…. ‘CAUSE NOW IT’S ONLY HOURS ‘TILL BIRTHDAYPARTY!
