——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Day 15
Date: 28 Jul 2008 17:57:00 -0000
Good morning!
We have a very nice night. Our concerns about the weather were unfounded. Most of the night was clear without any significant squalls. My personal theory about the weather is that the low that was spawning a lot of the earlier weather passed us by. In any case, it was great sailing last night with no fire drills. Everyone got a good night sleep and we made good time.
Last night was wonderful. For a lot of the evening almost all of the sky was clear and very dark. We could see all of the night sky except for a band of clouds around the base. It was the best night we had on the ocean. A great ending for what should be our last night of this voyage. We may not have been first in the race, but we had the best view last night. We plan to use that at the bar at KYC with the people who missed last night on the ocean.
The big change we made for last night was to take down the spinnaker (yes, I know it is a race, etc., etc.) and pole out the genoa on the spinnaker pole and run downwind “wing and wing”. This worked much better than we expected in that with the winds in the 15 to 25+ knot range we went almost as fast (7+ knots) but everything was under control. We have continued a good pace without the difficulty of running the spinnaker in high winds. It also seems like a much easier motion for the boat. It’s as if Acacia isn’t having to push as much water out of the way as when we fly the spinnaker. Had we know this this would have been a better way of getting through the earlier big squalls.
We did our 100 mile checking at about 5am and have about 60 miles to go to the finish line. It will be a while before we can see the Island of Oahu, but we know it is ahead. Everyone is looking forward to landfall.
Bob
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At 7/28/2008 (utc) our position was 21°50.83′N 156°47.88′W
