Marco - tales second place into Charleston

Finally here we are, Sergio and I literally just crossed the finish line in
front of Charleston Harbour, it’s the middle of the night, just after
midnight local time, the race officials are about to board the boat to check
the engine seals and then we’ll be able to drop the sails and motor towards
the marina. Hopefully we’re still in time to get our first beer in the
United States but we may have to wait for immigration officials before we’re
allowed to get off the boat, they are pretty strict over here with this
stuff…

It took us just under 30 days to sail from Punta del Este to take second
place in Charleston, three days faster than we had anticipated, finishing
within 24 hours of race leader Cessna Citation. We are very pleased with
our performance on this leg, we are again first of the vintage boats, it
may have been the mildest of all legs from a weather perspective but it
was quite tactical and required relentless attention to boat speed and
sail trim.

We took an early lead over our direct competitors on Phesheya and
Sec.Hayai and managed to build an advantage of nearly 200 miles in the run
up to the Caribbean Islands. From then onwards the winds were always
stronger, relatively speaking, at the back of the fleet allowing us to
close the gap to the leading boat, Cessna Citation, from 400 miles ahead
to just 160 but simultaneusly allowing Phesheya to close in from behind
from 185 miles to as little as 40 miles a couple of days ago.

In many respects it was a rather boring leg, I will remember the heat and
the endless amount of time spent under big spinnaker on the same tack with
little more to do than regularly check for sail trim and weed in the
rudders.

The easier weather conditions luckily meant that we have no damage to
report. We stupidly lost a spinnaker sheet during a manouvre and the only
thing that needs attending is the main alternator that has stopped working
a few weeks ago, let’s hope it does not require and expensive replacement.

We are looking forward to the time off in Charleston before the final
sprint back to Europe, I can’t believe I really made it this far, the
start in Palma seems a world away and now Europe is just a transatlantic
crossing away…

As always, very humbly and openly I thank anyone wishing to help with the
stopover costs or simply wishing to offer a celebratory beer, you can do
so online at www.marconannini.com/help

Also, don’t forget the boat is up for urgent sale and offers are invited
as soon as we’re back in Europe. For further information please email Ella
at connolly_ella@yahoo.com

We have 340 miles left to Charleston, we are pleased with how things have
gone in the past 2 days, after the tactical move to cover Phesheya we feel
a little more in control of our destiny. Our advantage over them has
plummeted from 120 miles to just 40 but has been fairly constant with only
minor changes since the gybe.

Needless to say we are really looking forward to getting to Charleston,
the wind is progressively decreasing so we hope the finale wont be too
much of a light winds struggle.

We’re heading north west, a little left of the direct route in
anticipation of the rotation of the wind and hoping to find the favourable
flow of the Gulf Stream to help us run fast along the American coast.

We’be been sailing under a gray murky sky for the past couple of days,
we’re hoping the cloud cover will break again and give us a gentle sunny
ride into South Carolina.

The last 24 hours have been incredibly frustrating, the whole day we
negotiated the passage of many rain clouds which played havoc with the
wind, on average we had a lot less than predicted by the forecast and
after each downpour we hoped things would stabilise but the never ending
sequence of squalls followed by windholes kept going on and on. Even more
annoyingly, we found an average of 1.5 knots of adverse current, only
after midnight the counter flow seems to have started decreasing.

The total effect of all the above has been dramatic on our advantage over
Phesheya, the miles have evaporated faster than the cold sweat over my
forehead at the thought of being overtaken after all this hard work. We
dropped more than 40 miles of advantage in just one day. The forecast is
inequivocable, being on the left side of the chessboard is an advantage at
every point from here to the finish and we’ve been waiting for every
opportunity to inch west and close the lateral separation to Phesheya.

Tonight after sunset, stuck under a windless cloud bouncing around in a
messy sea and just 10 knots of wind we decided that it was time to bite
the bullet and head west, or rather south west, as that’s the best we can
do, almost like a bishop unable to move sideways but forced to go
diagonally… the goal is to go an cover Phesheya whilst hopefully also
getting out of the adverse current, i’m not sure this is the fastest way to
Charleston but once we are in front of them and pretty much in the same
winds they will have a much tougher time overtaking us than if we leave the
corridor to our left unsupervised. Ocean racing boils down to match racing
once again, Cessna is too far ahead for any chance to catch them so the
only meaningful priority is to make sure we position ourselves between
Phesheya and the finish line. Sec.Hayai is out of the game with a 24 hour
penalty for their pit stop in Fortaleza.

Our advantage will have dropped dramatically by the morning but i’d rather
swallow my pride now than live in denial of the fact that staying here is
just too risky.

Just as i write a big rain cloud on the horizon has brought a sudden
windshift, this is the first we encounter since leaving the unstable airs
around the equator and unfortunately it probably signals the end of the
stable band of the trade winds… We have 1350 miles to the finish which
will bring more variety and hard work.

Ahead of us a patch of really light airs which wont fill for another two
days and which has already caused us to slow down and forced Cessna onto
the opposite gybe. This is of course all to Phesheya’s advantage, the
longer we’ll suffer in this air bubble the more miles they will catch up,
they have at least half a day longer to enjoy the stronger stable trade
winds but they will eventually get to ligher airs and should pay a high
price for the loss of their A2 big spinnaker.

My laptop charts still carry the log of all the races i did so far, i’m
using the same laptop since the 2009 OSTAR in fact and right now i can see
i’m crossing the track i followed on my way to Guadaloupe during the Route
du Rhum 2010. I didnt do very well, just 27th out of 45 boats, i had
chosen the northern route but made a mistake around the Azores high which
saw me dropping from 10th to mid fleet in a day when i got stuck in light
airs. Interestingly Conrad Colman was racing that race too, and we shared
the same strategy and the same mistake… we arrived in Guadaloupe
together, i could see him just behind me and i believe he crossed
the finish line just 6 minutes after me. He didnt take it very well,
that’s why he was quite annoyed when I beat him again in leg 1 (by only 3
hours after 41 days of racing)… after that he has made no further
mistakes and scored a perfect first in both leg 2 and 3 and is set to win
again in this leg, so, hopefuly he has forgiven me for the earlier
inconveniece i had caused.

I keep looking at the complex weather forecast ahead and i know i wont
find peace until we’re in Charleston, getting stuck in a wind hole is my
biggest worry since that poor performance in the Route du Rhum, we already
dropped 25 miles of our lead to Phesheya in just a day and our
160 miles advantage does not seem that great any more… we’re all here to
play till the end and i’m sure they’ll push hard seeing us slowing down…

Getting here has been a little more involved than we had anticipated, the
trade winds motorway was definitely not the smooth ride we expected. Every
afternoon the sky would swell with clouds forming out of the damp hot air,
each cloud approaching would bring stronger winds at first but a wind hole
behind it with significant wind shifts making for tricky sail changes. We
kept swapping between our furling solent and our furling gennaker.
Normally when the gennaker is not in use it is taken down to avoid the
risk of it coming unfurled and damaged but we figured we needed to be
agile and in the ever changing conditions so we kept it up all the time
and were able to rapidly go from one head sail to the other and keep
creeping forward during the phases of variable winds and until the air
cleared out again giving again regular winds. Perhaps it has nothing to do
with skill and we were just luckier than our followers in finding fewer
“potholes” along our road and are very happy with the advantage of nearly
100 miles we were able to accumulate in this stretch of water over our
sparring partners on Phesheya.

Last night we brought out our masthead spinnaker which has a beautiful cut
and can be sailed at a very hot angle, I am so glad we repaired it in
Punta del Este, it’s such a beautiful sail which kept us going very nicely
all day. I believe we’re the only boat in the race that is still sailing
with the same 9 sails we set off with in Palma, apart from a few
inevitable accidents with the spinnakers subsequently repaired along the
way, the sail choice has been perfect, we had very reliable sails in the
strong winds and some killer sails for the light airs, I really have to
thank Roberto Westermann, personal friend and sailmaker at Di-Tech in
Lavagna, Italy, who put so much thought into this selection building a top
choice of sails.

As we turned the corner the ever adverse current of last week has given
way to a pleasantly favourable current adding over half a knot to our
speed since a few hours ago, i think we’re on the edges of the Guyana
current which should help us on our way to Charleston giving back some of
the miles stolen by the Brasil current.

Life on board, as a consequence of the recent weather pattern, has gone
daily from tedious to fastidious – tedious in the regular winds and
extremely frustrating during the tricky rain clouds wind shifts. The heat
is increasing and i found myself steering in my pants and t-shirt during
the rain showers, the air cools down somewhat and after a while exposed to
wind and rain can experience a glimpse of that feeling of “cold” that you
keep dreaming of the rest of the time, my feet are swelling as a result of
the heat, i had experienced the same problem during leg one but luckily
this time it does not seem to be nearly as bad. When i left Punta del Este
my abdominal area was also quite swallen, I feared a problem with water
retention but after a consultation with my doctor he confirmed it was a
case of beer, burger and pizza retention which should be cured by the far
less appealing freeze dried food diet of recent.

So far and for several days we seemed to have fairly stable winds at night then we’d get stopped during the day in flukey winds and sudden rain showers caused presumably by the high temperatures and moist air becoming unstable. This morning for the first time the winds held strong after sunrise and the sky is unmistakeably changed, little white fluffy clouds are scattered regularly around instead of massive cumulus formations typical of the unstable air masses of the last few days, see the photo for an example.

We’ve emerged from this section of the race in second place squeezing a lead of 60 miles over Phesheya, our gamble to go offshore at Cabo Frio paid off eventually. I think we can now expect a drag race to the doldrums where things could get shaken again. I may be wrong so we’ll certainly keep a watchful eye on the Dutch and the Southafrincans and try cover our backs from a likely attack…

We had a few issues with the NKE electronics suddenly losing the boat speed reading, then the compass reading, all misteriously working again by simply powering off an on the system, luckily all the problems occurred in light airs and not while sailing with the big spinnaker in strong winds like during leg 3 when a similar failure caused the boat to go off in a big gybe resulting in the big spinnaker to be torn in half (and subsequently repaired in Punta del Este).

Another misterious source of worry came from the primary alternator we rely on to charge the batteries, for 2 consecutive days it seemed to have given up the ghost, only to wake up gingerly this morning and resume service as if nothing had ever happened.

So far, save for a spinnaker sheet which I quite stupidly lost overboard during a manouvre we havent really had any damage or serious problems, let’s hope things carry on like this to make Charleston a stress free and cheap stopover. The budget has long ago been totally depleted. In Punta we were being hosted in free accommodation by the Yacht Club Punta del Este and for the other expenses i relied on the generosity of many readers who have sent donations through www.marconannini.com/help which i’m very grateful for. We’re hoping to find a host family during our relatively brief Charleston stopover and hopefully the price of food will be no where near the inflated prices of Punta del Este where an espresso could cost over 3 euros! For now we’re getting in the swing of our freeze dried diet, the last fresh item, an apple, was eaten yesterday.

We had a tough choice to make, either head inshore in shallow waters or offshore in deep waters where the current would be less. Given the forecast at the time we headed offshore on a slow painful tack to the east as we watched Phesheya on the tracker take the opposite gamble and head inshore gainining initially many miles on us and overtaking us in the official rankings. To add to the complication a vast field of oil rigs to our north which would have been impossible to negotiate in light airs meant we had to head further east than originally planned, overnight we could see the glow of dozens of oil drilling platforms just over the horizon which looked like a distant shore of a busy coastline.

Yesterday as the wind died out we battled all day for every inch, we could have been forgiven to think we had already reached the doldrums as the conditions were very similar, windless patches broken by rain clouds and wildly variable winds, in the space of few hundred meters the wind could come from the south then from the north, 3 knots or 25. A part from the frustration progress was very poor. Overnight the situation seemed to stabilise and match the forecast easterly winds so we finally made some progress in the light air using our light winds code zero which kept us going in the elusive airs, so much so that we overtook Phesheya again.

With sunshine this morning however more rain clouds and variable airs, turning around the clock and in intensity. We wait painfully each position update, keeping our fingers crossed that the situation is just as difficult fore everyone, during the day sailing near the shore could offer some interesting local breezes so we are aware that despite a forecast that should favour our position relative to Phesheya local effects may give totally differnt sailing conditions during day time.

Progress has come as a very mixed pack of cards, after breaking away from the coast of Uruguay we spent two days battling with strong headwinds, bashing to windward never feels fun after any length of time spent ashore, so it was uncomfortable and tiring, eventually a weather front came through bringing strong gusty winds but also the long awaited wind shift, the sails were freed and we started making faster progress to the north.

The winds were unsettled at first and this required endless adjustments to the trim and sail changes which left me exhausted, when finally the wind came aft we sailed conservatively at first but as the conditions stabilised we started increasing sail, first with the small spinnaker, then the medium and eventually we enjoyed a beautiful run in a sunny sky under the big spinnaker.

During this period we managed to increase our lead over Phesheya and Sec Hayai and nearly caught up Cessna, coming to within 4 miles of the leaders, the winds had favoured us and our relative position to the others to the left of the pack had paid off hansomely just for fortunes to be reversed when their initial investment to the east started to pay dividends. We found ourself sailing dead downwind towards our target forcing us to gybe several times and losing ground both to the leading boat and to the followers.

As the winds continue to shift our spinnaker run came to an end in decreasing winds, in the space of half a day we went from sailing downwind to beating upwind again, progress has been very slow since, especially as we are pushing against the unfavourable Brasilian current which runs from north to south decreasing our speed by nearly a knot. The wind is light and very variable, often shifting by 20-30 degrees in the space of few minutes, the leading boat seems to have found more stable winds throughout and has progressively increased the lead, Phesheya once the last boat of the fleet trailing us by over 60 miles has made excellent progress and is now just over 15 miles behind.

We have another two-three days of light variable winds ahead which can bring mixed fortunes to each boat, our eyes are firmly set on the easterly trade winds a few days sailing ahead of us, once we manage to feel the gentle flow of their predictable air we should start making fast progress towards the equator and the doldrums, another challenging part of the race.

We’re pleased with our progress so far hanging onto second place, we incurred no damage during the strong gusty winds and managed to keep control of Phesheya although we know that the next few days of light winds could reshuffle positions at any time so we have to keep our focus.

The start in Punta was relatively quiet although I was a bit annoyed with the spectators boat all over the starting area but all was well once we got off. Whilst Cessna was first over the line Phesheya took a spectacular shortcut between a rocky reef and the beach at the southern tip of the Punta del Este peninsula and the two boats were soon in the lead with
Sec Hayai in third and us trailing behind. We had decided to take things easy at the start and keep calm as in fact Sergio and I had never sailed together before (if you discount the 200 meters trip to the fuel dock on thursday). In fact there hasnt been a single leg where we did a good start and once more we faced the familiar task of hunting down those ahead and try to take advantage of any opportunity to pass.

We sailed all day in very light winds with Sec Hayai and Phesheya really close by and Cessna still visible on the horizon. As Sec Hayai has only just rejoined the race after the dismasting in Cape Town is very far behind on the overall points ranking so we decided to go hunting for Phesheya. Just before sunset we managed to pass them a first time, but to be fair we were so close that if they had wanted to throw Cape Crisp apples at us we’d have been an easy target.

During the night we sailed very close to the brazilian shore so we tacked out with land very closed ahead in about 10 meters of water. Phesheya followed suit but soon after decided to tack inshore again. We were faced with a dilemma, tack north again to cover them or follow our own tactics. After some discussion we decide we didnt want to be cornered with the shore to one side limiting our options so we continued offshore. During the next day we saw an opportunity to gain a few miles to the north and the overall result has been very pleasing, we’re now in second place overall with a decent 15 miles lead over Phesheya.

Unsurprisingly we are trailing Cessna, the only latest generation boat left in the fleet, who’s led since the start, we know we have little chance to beat them this leg, they will be much faster especially after the doldrums, but we’ll always be ready to take advantage of any opportunity to tease them which may come. For now our priority is to preserve our position ahead of Sec Hayai and Phesheya, we are thre identical boats that came out of the same mould so it’s particularly
exciting to have our little race within the race.

As i write the wind has started to increase above 20 knots, there’s a front with up to 30 knots of wind heading our way. After the front we should be able to enjoy some downwind sailing but there’s plenty of tricky light airs after that so the deck of cards is still thick, with plenty of hands to be dealt still, we’ve only just begun!

We made it! We are in Punta del Este Uruguay, 35 days at sea! We have sailed through gale force winds, we reached across the depths of the Southern Ocean with albatrosses to guard our progress, we clenched our teeth through the icebergs, we fought with the icy winds from Anctartica, we rounded the most dreaded cape in the world, we sailed through the snow capped cliffs of la Tierra del Fuego, we caught kelp in our rudders and watched spectacular sunsets and sunrises, we smelt land by the shores of Argentina and crossed the muddy waters of the Plata river, but most of all we kept our dream alive, one step closer to home, one step closer to
racing around the world. And what a result, we are second in Punta and climbed to second place in the overall leaderboard!!!

We’ve just arrived and all i want to do now is celebrate, eat, drink, laugh, cheer, jump around…

Thank you all for the encouragement and support, we wouldnt have made it so far without your help and constant trickle of donations received through www.marconannini.com/help