SOH60′ TJV2015 – updates from the boat – 27-29th Oct. with skippers’ log

Message of Nándor Fa skipper, Spirit of Hungary:

29th october, 02:26.

“Ever since the beginning this is the first time that the weather is nice enough now for me to sit down and write. It’s not easy to target the keys on the keyboard, though I’m aiming strongly. This usually never happens to me, but my stomach is behaving weird, I guess it’s had enough of the bumpy ride.

After Brest we started towards West like the others, but then our routing suggested to stay on the East side of the cyclone. Be believed in it, so here we are. We are in reaching wind at the moment among waves that are coming in our face, it’s very punchy (I think it’s even more punchy on the other side, only they are getting it from different directions).

First we had absolutely no information about the others, they disappeared from the AIS, so we didn’t know they’ve gone to the West side. We are doing our best here. The boat is doing great, I hope it stays like this. Our biggest problem for now is that the pawl on the mast winch was broken right after the start as it caught the sheet of the solent during a turn. Of course we can still winch with it, just a bit more complicated than normally.

The last two days were a test for the water ballasts and the daggerboards, which were modified before the race. They all work very well. For now we’ll have some light wind situation, but in two days we probably get the north-westerly at Morocco which can take us toward the Canaries. It will get easier from there. We start to feel the weather warming up, the water is getting warmer too.

Peter is a great guy, it’s very good to sail together with him.”

Message from Péter Perényi co-skipper, Spirit of Hungary:

28th October, 23:18.

“We’ve been sailing in upwind since Brest, in tough 6-7 m mixed high seas. To understand this, try to imagine 30 knots of wind coming from 170° wind angle, that had created 6-7m waves (it had solid 8 hours to do so), and has changed direction to 270° creating waves from a completely different direction. Both of these waves are working at the same time. So we are in this situation at the moment, it’s giving us and the boat a hard time.

Most of the boats are in the West side of the cyclone heading south, we are on the East side. According to our forecast, those who are heading towards the center of the cyclone will run out of wind for a bit. This is exactly what we are trying to avoid here on the East, and if all goes as planned, we should manage to. It depends on 1-2 hours, we need to hurry! We’ve crossed several showers along the way, which significantly change wind direction and power. Oh, and I almost forgot: water’s coming from bottom to top all over the place.”

Position: 42’ 56.250 013′ 05.000