received 21.12.08 1000 GMT
Is it chess or rolling the dice?
As the fleet is becoming compressed, we see opportunities on the horizon, 300 mile to the finish. Our closest friends, Green Dragon and Telefónica Black have split and we want to catch at least one of them. Hours over sat pics, grib files and quickscat, heads together for Nick Bubb, Stig Westergaard, Wouter Verbraak and myself and still the question is: is it a plan we have or pure speculation? So far, the models haven’t been too good in this part of the world. The first mark of the exclusion zone is currently dead downwind, so one side will pay and we have chosen the eastern side. Fingers crossed.
The amount of shipping in the straits is impressive and the AIS is extremely valuable in finding the lanes between the bigger brothers. Yesterday we were racing ‘Matilda, a sizeable tanker for hours in the absence of a sailing yacht. In the end she couldn’t keep up with our pointing, was footing off a bit and gained ground to leeward.
Getting closer to land the garbage in the water increases and we regularly dodge plastic, cans, timber and other bits and pieces giving evidence of close civilization.
Andreas Hanakamp - skipper
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