• Bye Bye Philippines

    After a rather tiring approach to the Philippines we managed to get a few days of recovery. After the mandatory deep clean of the entire boat and the usual maintenance work we only had to carry out a few repairs, as we do in every stopover. The biggest by far was the repair of our…

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  • The Wait for the Wind

    The last few days were relatively low on wind. There is the occasional squall passing by, bringing us some more wind. But all in all the wind was low to very low and the progress was respectively slow. The boats ahead seem to have stronger winds and thus the distance to the next boat ahead…

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  • Broken

    The second half of this race has not really started as we had anticipated. First we were caught off guard by the speed and force of a squall. It looked like we might be able to outrun the squall and avoid the worst part, but then the wind started building surprisingly fast. Right after the…

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  • Big red patch

    The past days were very variable. The winds near the equator are rather weak and change a lot. On the other hand the high sun radiation creates a lot of thermal activity, cloud formation and potentially squalls. Those cannot only shift the wind direction drastically but produce strong gusts. To spot those squalls in due…

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  • Doldrums for a second time

    On our way onto the northern hemisphere, we have to pass the doldrums yet again. Similar to what we saw three months ago when heading south, this region is notorious for light winds, hot temperatures and some squalls. We have meanwhile completed our motor-assisted section in this race and are heading for the end of…

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  • See you again Australia

    A lot has happened since our arrival to Australia at the beginning of December. There were the festivities at sea and many more impressions, I will likely remember forever. Nonetheless, the time has come to bid farewell to Australia. But I will be back at some point. To clear out we have moved our boats…

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  • No more options?

    As we have now realised we did not just get stuck in a wind hole. We also got dragged into an adverse current which carried us southeast. This pushed us further into the no-wind-zone and we lost distance made towards the finish. This is how we lost more than 400 nautical miles to the next…

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  • New Year – New Luck

    We transitioned into the new year a bit east of Tasmania. However, we were far enough out at sea to not see any of the fireworks on land. And the celebrations on board were also quite muted. Right at midnight we had a small whistle concert after having spent almost an hour trying to right…

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  • Course Tasmania

    After the cold front passed us a few days ago the temperatures dropped as did the wind. The wind hole had presented itself in the forecasts already, however it was too big to sail around it. Thus, the focus was to use the last bits of wind to get into a position, where the wind…

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  • A Christmas to Remember

    Christmas on board is certainly something different. Even though we had a nice meal with fresh vegetables and a big dessert, we only had limited time. And that was pretty much the extent of the coziness. The weather had very little mercy with us. We had reduced the watches to a minimum with only three…

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