Living life hour by hour, day by day

Dalin’s biggest impedance remains the sea state leftover in the wake of the low pressure he is at the back of. 

“We've been on a really bad sea state for some time. Plus, I'm eating a bit of the sea from the storm in front of me, so the sea is not easy now, it's not super pleasant. But really the conditions are pretty good, the wind is neither too light nor too strong, but it's the state of the sea that's hindering progress. I have between 20 and 25 knots of wind, there are little moments of sun, clearings, it's 15 degrees in the boat, I haven't put the intermediate layers back on.” He notes this morning, 

“Everything is fine, I've found my cruising speed, even if the last few days, the last few weeks have been quite trying, there doesn't seem to be any real rest opportunities on the horizon for the moment, but everything is fine, in great shape, and the Indian seems to have gone by extremely extremely quickly, really!”

“I haven't looked at the Pacific too much yet, I'm only looking with one eye, I wanted to stay focused on this last section there until the point of the ice zone, it seems to change a lot from one routing to another, it's not very set, for the moment I'm not wasting too much time on it, I'm focused on my current section which is rather set, we'll see about the rest in due time, I know that I'm going to go to the AEZ point and then we'll see…..”

“I managed to get out of here so far without any known problem, I'll have to take a tour of the boat, it seems to be going well, nothing obvious in any case, it continues to be great.” 

“It has been so intense I have no sense of time since the south Atlantic, I have been just living day by day, working through my list of things to do, trim the boat, change the sails, reef in reef out, check the boat, eat, sleep, I am living by the day. I am certainly not realising at all we are nearly half way.”

Davies blackout

Eagle eyed Sam Davies fans will have noticed the British skipper has lost a few small miles to her running mates, she explains why: 

“ Hello! I just had an “interesting” night. Last night I charged my batteries with the engine (alternator). I am on the shore where I no longer have a hydrogenerator because I tore off its support, so I am holding on to the engine charges and the solar panels at the moment.

I was 2/3 charged. The boat is moving fast in the rough sea. Suddenly, everything cut out - no more info, no more pilot, no more computer - complete BLACK-OUT! So the boat went super fast in a heap with a wave and I was thrown out of my seat in the cockpit - I didn't even have time to grab the helm! We ended up tacking, sails against, boat lying at almost 90 degrees.

And there, don't panic. I no longer have a pilot, no more electronics, I can't even tilt the keel to help straighten the boat... But in the end, it was better to leave the boat lying down and go inside to try to turn the electricity back on. It's a bit impressive but the sails don't sway and the boat was stable without needing the pilot 😅. So, walking on the walls instead of the bottom, I climbed into the boat to access the switches to try to get it going again. There you have to be patient 😅

Finally I managed to find some energy and slowly, taking my time, I put the boat back in the right place and we were off again.

The only problem is - I don't know exactly where the fault is coming from - so I had to re-test several times to try to understand... so that's several blackouts and several figures of speech with the boat lying on the water each time. It's not very reassuring 😬 and it's not very fast either 😭

Isa playing the long game 

No doubt heavily influenced by her abandonment on the last race, having to withdraw into Salvador de Bahia in Brazil, Isa Joschke errs on the side of caution on MACSF, speaking about the Indian Ocean she reflects, “ I hope it's not too cold and too ugly, and that it's not a fight. I'm fine, but I'm not so much wondering how I'm doing after a month at sea, but how I'm doing after a week in the Indian Ocean, because I think a week ago I was in great shape, the descent of the Atlantic was nice, quite relaxing, but for a week now the atmosphere has changed completely, I'm more tired from the last few days than anything else!”

“What is certain is that it is very active this year, the depressions are very windy, quite a bit to the North of the route, it forces you to make choices, you can't watch them go by and tell yourself that you can take any route. Much more active than four years ago, I had already found it hard because the sea is rough, the squalls are violent, and in addition there is constant very strong wind, I didn't expect it to be so hard like this.”

“The boat is fine, I had a few scares in the moments of strong wind, with reefing lines that got stuck, I was stressed, I was afraid, both of putting myself in danger, of tearing my sails, I'm not bored! But overall no injuries!”

“My trajectory generally consists of trying to preserve the boat as much as possible, by sailing to the North I always have an emergency exit. Between the wind of the files and the wind of the map, and reality there is a huge difference. When my wind speed reader shows 30 knots, there are at least 35 or even 40. So the idea is to protect yourself from situations that could cause damage! Aim for the long term, the road is still long, my boat will have to endure many more difficult situations and me too!”