{"id":327,"date":"2012-06-06T09:58:04","date_gmt":"2012-06-06T09:58:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/?p=327"},"modified":"2012-06-06T09:58:04","modified_gmt":"2012-06-06T09:58:04","slug":"riding-the-storm-fast-progress-towards-the-finish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/riding-the-storm-fast-progress-towards-the-finish\/","title":{"rendered":"Riding the storm – fast progress towards the finish"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Progress in the last couple of days has been fantastic. Last week we had
\nto take a difficult choice to slow down to avoid the worst of a severe
\ndepression that was about to cross our path, as it turned out we saw some
\nhorrible conditions and had some damage to sails, Cessna ahead of us was
\nforced to stop the boat during the worst of the gale as a safety
\nprecaution in enormous breaking seas, all in all we were happy with our
\nchoice although it had cost us quite a few miles to the leaders.<\/p>\n

In the past few days on the other hand we’ve had the opposite scenario,
\nthe extra-tropical storm Beryl was behind us and threatening to give us a
\nnasty battering and all considered the safest option was to try to run as
\nfast as possible ahead of the centre of the cyclone which then hopefully
\nwould have passed to our stern on its northward trajectory… The picture
\nshows the very active centre of the low that we are running away from and
\nit’s predicted position behind us, and towards the north.<\/p>\n

So, with a double incentive, avoiding a storm and getting as fast as
\npossible to the finish line, we’ve been pushing hard and clocked some
\nimpressive mileage. Before the winds built up yesterday we were surfing
\nalong, fastest boat in the fleet, with the biggest masthead spinnaker,
\nthen before sunset the sky started to be covered in clouds, the wind was
\nbacking to the south and increasing, all signs of the approaching low
\npressure system. We changed to the smallest spinnaker, a very heavy number
\nthat we’d used extensively in the southern ocean and we kept riding the
\nbuilding seas and winds. During the night we had steady 30-35 knots with
\nthe maximum gust at 40 knots, a bit more than we expected but decided to
\nride it with the spinnaker up, the boat was surfing often at 15 to 18
\nknots in an exuberant power display, sometimes surfing at over 20 knots
\nbetween two walls of spray it felt great and i just kept suppressing the
\nthoughts of something going wrong at such speeds with the spinnaker up in
\nthat wind…<\/p>\n

All has held together so far and the miles to go kept decreasing rapidly
\nuntil earlier on we crossed the psychological milestone of 1000 miles to
\nthe finish. The wind is still strong but should start decreasing within
\nhours and hopefully this will become another successful storm tactics pub
\nstory to tell!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Progress in the last couple of days has been fantastic. Last week we had to take a difficult choice to slow down to avoid the worst of a severe depression that was about to cross our path, as it turned out we saw some horrible conditions and had some damage to sails, Cessna ahead of […]<\/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-327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-ocean-race"],"views":3087,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327","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=327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions\/329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}