{"id":298,"date":"2012-04-17T16:04:56","date_gmt":"2012-04-17T16:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/?p=298"},"modified":"2012-04-17T16:04:56","modified_gmt":"2012-04-17T16:04:56","slug":"second-place-throught-the-celox-scoring-gate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/second-place-throught-the-celox-scoring-gate\/","title":{"rendered":"Second place throught the Celox scoring gate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Marco<\/a>The last few days have been, as predicted, a drag race towards the
\nnorth-east corner of Brasil, all tactical decision had been played out
\nearlier around the tricky corner near Rio de Janeiro where the wind tends
\nto be always on the nose and there is a nasty counter current. Since then
\nwe’ve proceeded in a near perfect straight line to this next corner where
\nwe’ll all “turn left” towards Charleston. The Celox virtual scoring gate
\nis placed on this turning point which marks the beginning of the next
\nphase of the race and we’re quite pleased to be crossing in second place
\nafter the boys on Cessna who unfortunately have slipped from our reach and
\nare further ahead. We’ve however succeeded in our intermediate goal of
\nbeing first of the three first generation Akilarias in the race and kept
\nthe Dutch and South african teams behind us.<\/p>\n

Getting here has been a little more involved than we had anticipated, the
\ntrade winds motorway was definitely not the smooth ride we expected. Every
\nafternoon the sky would swell with clouds forming out of the damp hot air,
\neach cloud approaching would bring stronger winds at first but a wind hole
\nbehind it with significant wind shifts making for tricky sail changes. We
\nkept swapping between our furling solent and our furling gennaker.
\nNormally when the gennaker is not in use it is taken down to avoid the
\nrisk of it coming unfurled and damaged but we figured we needed to be
\nagile and in the ever changing conditions so we kept it up all the time
\nand were able to rapidly go from one head sail to the other and keep
\ncreeping forward during the phases of variable winds and until the air
\ncleared out again giving again regular winds. Perhaps it has nothing to do
\nwith skill and we were just luckier than our followers in finding fewer
\n“potholes” along our road and are very happy with the advantage of nearly
\n100 miles we were able to accumulate in this stretch of water over our
\nsparring partners on Phesheya.<\/p>\n

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

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

Life on board, as a consequence of the recent weather pattern, has gone
\ndaily from tedious to fastidious – tedious in the regular winds and
\nextremely frustrating during the tricky rain clouds wind shifts. The heat
\nis increasing and i found myself steering in my pants and t-shirt during
\nthe rain showers, the air cools down somewhat and after a while exposed to
\nwind and rain can experience a glimpse of that feeling of “cold” that you
\nkeep dreaming of the rest of the time, my feet are swelling as a result of
\nthe heat, i had experienced the same problem during leg one but luckily
\nthis time it does not seem to be nearly as bad. When i left Punta del Este
\nmy abdominal area was also quite swallen, I feared a problem with water
\nretention but after a consultation with my doctor he confirmed it was a
\ncase of beer, burger and pizza retention which should be cured by the far
\nless appealing freeze dried food diet of recent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last few days have been, as predicted, a drag race towards the north-east corner of Brasil, all tactical decision had been played out earlier around the tricky corner near Rio de Janeiro where the wind tends to be always on the nose and there is a nasty counter current. Since then we’ve proceeded in […]<\/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-298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-ocean-race"],"views":2777,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298","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=298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":301,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions\/301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}