A change of pace

Today has been a total change of pace, instead of the frenetic activity of the last three days, I've had a chance to focus on details and have tried to really understand Medallia and tease out what the boat needs to find and maintain that extra speed.

Since rounding Gallimard waypoint last night I have been racing in close proximity with Fabrice on Nexans, to the South and Alan on Hubolt to the North. For much of the morning I could either see them against the horizon or on AIS and this gave me a real opportunity to compare speed and heading and some good performance indicators to work against other than my own data. This has been invaluable. One thing is for sure in this fleet, if you take your eye off the ball for a short amount of time or make one mistake then it is really hard to get back up again. Even when I am sleeping I cannot afford to fall off the pace.

I've been playing a lot with heel angle and settings for my pixel pilot overlays. Occasionally taking the helm, getting Medallia going fast and trying to analyse my own natural helming movements so that I can program that pattern of response into the pilot. I am looking a lot at average performance and comparing to that of my opponents. It has been a big learning day and I have really profited from the consistent course and the lack of sail changes and manoeuvres.

Going into the night the breeze is building and I will need to reef and maybe change to the J3 at some point. Like the rest of the fleet ahead of me I will continue on a port tack into Finisterre then tack and head North across the Biscay. There are reports of a load of wood drifting off Finisterre from a spilled cargo, Louis Burton encountered some earlier today. I am surprised that is still there as when I made the delivery up from Portugal over two weeks ago I passed Sam Goodchild in his multi 50 going in the other direction and he warned me of the same thing. The ocean hasn't dispersed it yet. There is not a huge amount I can do, it would not be picked up by radar and I can't really keep a continual look out so hopefully I won't encounter any. I have pulled up my windward rudder and the leeward one has a 'fuse' on the downline so if I hit anything it will hopefully pop up rather than damage the rudder.

The sun has just set and the sea is starting to build so the night will take on a different character to the day now. --