A night message aboard Medallia

Morning! All good on Medallia, we are currently gliding along in 10 knots of wind, flat seas, and have spent the whole night fighting off la Mie Caline, which finally over took me about 30 minutes ago.

Yesterday was a tough day, it was full on constant work. Eventually I saw 50 knots, just as the front finally passed overhead, at around 0700 yesterday morning and the change was brutal. The sea state after the front was horrendous, not helped by the fact it takes about an hour to empty the ballast out of the bow of Medallia and so not only were the waves big, breaking and coming from strange angles, but we pretty much either went through them, due to having not enough sail up and too much weight in the bow - this meant every time I tried to do anything on deck, I was constantly dealing with huge, slow moving walls of water that were big enough to lift me off my feet as they came down the deck. They also filled up the cockpit multiple times.

The work just never stopped, and I struggled with energy, eventually having to accept the fact there was not enough fuel in my tank to grind out the mainsail reefs, I went from three reefs to a full main on the 'granny gear' watching the sail slowly inch up the mast and promising myself tea and a rest when it was all over.but it never seemed to be over, moving stacks, emptying ballast, bailing out the bow, which got filled with water by a rogue wave as I got the down wind zero on deck, then all of the checking for damage post 50 knot front.

We came out of it quite well. I have some damage to a furler drum, which is superficial, the J3 tackline has some significant chafe and I am going to need to get sewing today, there were some funny noises coming from the back of the boat and I discovered that one of the rudder quadrants had worked loose, so I had to climb in the back with sockets and spanners to pinch them both back up. I think this will need to be a weekly job, we had similar problems on the TJV, and Alan told me he had the same.
The water ballast is leaking which is disappointing but not fatal, just more work for me. We really thought we had nailed the leaks before the start, but apparently that has always leaked, even Bernard Stamn said it leaked.

Eventually when everything had been checked and changed, and the boat was once again in a good configuration for conditions, I settled down for a sleep, only for my AIS alarm to go off as La Mie Caline was behind me and on collision course. We have been fighting it out all night and I've had a chance to take a couple of naps, in reality I was pretty glad when Arnaud eventually pulled ahead - I mean it's great to be battling with a foiler but I really really needed some sleep.

Today, the breeze will go further forwards, and I expect to peel to the jib any minute now. I have a full jobs list of sewing and splicing to get through in the final post front clear up. I need to get some sleep, and eat more or I will be stuck in the granny gear for the rest of the race.

I've noted the warnings about tropical depression Theta and there she is, right in our path. the tricky thing about that is going to be negoitating what happens afterwards as it appears to have sucked all of the wind out of the surrounding areas. I need my brain to be out of the granny gear by then.

enough from me,

a demain

Pip