In the last week we fought our way down the west coast of the United States of America. First we past Oregon before going down along the coast of California, past San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Meanwhile we have gone past all of them and are now sailing along the Mexican coast. The winds on our journey have been rather weak and changeable so far, making our progress slow and tedious. Along the […]
Continue readingSeattle Stopover
With some delay but just in time for prizegiving we arrived to Seattle. And that despite the broken rudder not in last place. In addition, everyone was unharmed with only a few minor injuries. But after 31 days at sea we were all very tired and felt relieved that we had finally arrived. The stopover passed thus very quickly. First we had to finish the deep clean before carrying out our regular maintenance and the […]
Continue readingOn and on we go
We are sitting in a secondary low pressure system for a couple of days now, which has developed between two high pressure systems. It is that low which is responsible for the winds which are blowing from roughly the direction we want to go: east. Thus our progress is slow. We are beating against the wind and only make small progress towards the finish. On a positive note however we are not falling further behind. […]
Continue readingPacific Spa
The last few days have been intense. Regarding the race we have been doing great. The distance to the boats ahead has been reduced, while we could increase our lead over the boat behind us. Overall we are very pleased with our performance. This has been possible due to strong northerly winds. This allowed us to make good speeds with the undamaged rudder in the water. In addition to the fast sailing conditions the northerly […]
Continue readingHappy Easter again
After we broke our rudder we were underway with wind coming from the wrong side for some time. With the good rudder on the windward side we had to make sure the boat stayed more or less level as to not lift the rudder out of the water. Correspondingly the sail plan has to be chosen conservatively, which meant our progress was slow. After the wind turned and we had it on our favourable side […]
Continue readingIt was the first day with low pressure conditions which the North Pacific is famous for. We were on a beam reach and made good speed towards Seattle. And that despite the wind blowing at force eight and regularly gusting to force nine. The sea state was correspondingly high and came in from the same direction, hitting us beam on. Thus, it was very wet on deck. We had changed our headsail already early on […]
Continue readingCalm Pacific
In the past few days the wind has been rather variable. Sometimes we had barely any wind and then it was a little more but coming from the wrong direction. As a result our progress was pretty slow. On the other handwe were able to utilise those times of low wind for some cleaning and maintenance work. Thus our boat is as shiny as it was on the first day. Now we are preparing the […]
Continue readingPacific, here we go
After a short but very intense stopover in Tongyeong we are underway to cross the Pacific. Or at least on our way into the Pacific. The start followed the meanwhile well known order. However, we were treated to a festive farewell ceremony on the main stage in the race village. Following that we slipped lines and had our parade of sail. The start itself was then quite slow, as we had expected. At just under […]
Continue readingGroundhog Day
The race from Qingdao, China to Tongyeong, South Korea is the shortest race of our circumnavigation. This stage was supposed to take between four and five days, covering almost 500 nautical miles on the way. For us this would anyhow be a very special race as we are representing the Korean coastal city on our journey around the world. In addition we are the first round the world yacht race to come to South Korea. […]
Continue readingFirst podium finish?!?
After the start the next intermediate goal was the Ocean Sprint. Once again there were bonus points waiting for those boats, which would pass between two virtual lines the fastest. In our case it was the latitudes 23 degrees north and 26 degrees north. However, this time the race course was not passing between those lines directly but with an angle, even having additional course marks placed in the zone. This opened the field for […]
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