Woke up to an early watch this morning with the prospect of a good day of winds. As the sun came up it became clear that the sea state had abated slightly and that the squalls had thinned to the point where we are now ready to fly the parasail again.

The sail is 252 sq m and so it’s a lot to handle but the foredeck of the rapier 550 offers a big space to do that. We set it once and then realised there was a small tear in it and so we took it down again, repaired the tear and as I write this it has been up now for about 3 hours. Helming this boat is easy under any circumstances but from the picture you can see that our Swiss helmsman is not having to worn to hard right now! Our VMG has jumped from 6.5 knots under jib alone to 9 knots under parasail. That’s good news for the crew who are ready to go for a walk on land again!

The first couple of racing boats in our class are now finished but no other cruising multihulls yet and so it looks like our position will still be a good one, despite the loss of the asymmetric spinnaker early in the trip.

Fair winds

Mark