![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Wild-White-Horses.jpg\" "\\"Wild")
<\/a><\/p>\nEven the novelty of riding the back of a Southern Ocean low wears out
\nafter a while, it’s amazing what you get used to, we’ve been below, hatch
\nclosed, for the past two days pretty much eating and sleeping and riding
\nthis mad highway averaging around 12 knots but with surfs well above 20
\nknots, the maximum wind we recorded so far was 52.7 knots but otherwise
\nhas been anywhere between 33 and 48 knots. Unfortunately with such a
\nwide range we can’t really put any more sail up as we have to be careful
\nabout the top end and the gusts so we are a little slower when the wind
\ndrops, up and down all the time… I guess that’s still a force 8 to 9
\nthat we are riding but i cant rememeber my beaufort scale…<\/p>\n
Bad news is we have broken the Watt&Sea hydrogenerator, the bracket that
\nholds it always looked flimsy to me and today the whole thing just buckled
\nand bent and now we cant hold the propeller in the water. I will have a
\nbetter look when conditions permit but i suspect we’ll have to rely
\nentirely on the little diesel we have left to charge batteries, cutting
\ndown on electricity consumption and forgetting the lovely heater that had
\nmade such a difference in the worst moments of the upwind storm a couple
\nof days back.<\/p>\n
The miles are ticking fast and now we are the same distance to finish as
\nthe Route du Rhum i did last year, just under 3600 miles, it then took me
\n22 days but considering there was a lot of upwind and several windless
\ncalms to negotiate i think we can hope for a faster passage from here to
\nwellington, say 18 days or less with Christmas and New Year somewhere
\nalong the line. Fingers crossed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Even the novelty of riding the back of a Southern Ocean low wears out after a while, it’s amazing what you get used to, we’ve been below, hatch closed, for the past two days pretty much eating and sleeping and riding this mad highway averaging around 12 knots but with surfs well above 20 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-ocean-race"],"views":2368,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions\/121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}