Sunshine for the reluctant Finnish star, Ari Huusela today....

We have six knots of wind and six to seven knots of speed so it is all good this morning and I have some sunshine now, no matter what life is always better with some sunshine don’t you think? The TWA is 60 degrees. It looks like I have this now for a few hours and then we will have nine knots in the afternoon. This morning is going to be very, very light. In the evening there will be just a little bit more.
I am happy. I am sailing in a straight direction towards the finish and so that feels good. During the nights it builds up to 15 knots. We have a light day tomorrow and the very light the day before the finish but we will see. Latest routing has me at the finish on Friday afternoon, which sounds good. I am going to push for that.
It is good now being close to the finish and the prospect of there being no boat breaking conditions is very much preferable. I just want to finish safely. Maybe on the last day there will be 20-25kts something like that and it is upwind so it will be a bit hard. But that is acceptable. How you finish is an important last memory.
Are you very fed up with the light winds?
Not so much, yesterday was a good day and today feels good. Like I say when it is sunny now it makes all the difference, there are blue skies, when the boat is moving in the right direction, even if it slowly I am really happy. I know the forecasts and I am super happy, I really am in a good mood now. Sunday was somehow very hard, it was really bad. I was really pissed off. But it passed. But you know it is going to happen. After 114 days you will have bad days. I think at least 90 per cent of my days have been good ones. And now today I can rest up and catch up on sleep.
I have my Solent headsail up, we are quite close to the wind, quite upwind. It looks like it might open up to 90 degrees so it might be good with the Code Zero later. At 12kts it is too much upwind with my Code Zero. I am at 70 per cent of my polars now.
How do you know what day number it is?
I write my log. I have a paper log book which I write ever day. The motivation was really high to Cape Horn, that was so my big moment, my dream for the race when it was so nice. The Atlantic has been a struggle. Almost all of my and days have been on the Atlantic but when I read about the other sailors it is has been the same, hard for most, almost all the others. So now if I can have these conditions for the finish that will leave a good feeling in my mind, that is important. I write my log every day, more recently it has been only about five or six lines, but before I wrote much more. We have an agreement to write a book which should be out in August. I send two or three e-mails a week to Niina to publish on our social media and so we can wrap it and pack it and make it into a book. This project has become so, so huge in Finland I am amazed. My life will be different when I get home, I believe, there are so many people who are following me, who know who Ari Huusela is.
I set out to do this for myself. And so I will just try to be my honest self I don’t want to make any noise about it. This is just what has happened. I have just written the stories and I think the people who have been locked down have seen it as a big relief. Our biggest comedian’s show in Finland had a sketch about me the other day, it is incredible!