| At sea. Volvo Ocean Race: ABN AMRO ONE hitting 27 knots in new breeze |
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| Friday, 06 January 2006 | |
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Mike Sanderson: Had some awesome sailing out here today on the good ship ABN AMRO ONE. After a really light airs night last night trying to wriggle our way through the ridge of Hhgh pressure, finally in the early hours of the morning we got the new breeze from the West and were off. By daylight we had spinnakers on and where in sight of Both ABN AMRO ONE and the Pirates. The Pirates and us split west with the kids digging a little further south. Had a fun day sailing down wind with the Pirates in breezes at times as high as 30 knots, in the peak. We kept to our promise and changed down to our smaller spinnaker, a hard feeling when you see one of your competition still toughing it out on there full size masthead sail. So much has been talked about how it is going to be necessary to throttle back on this leg just to get there in one piece. We did the changes and even though we were no slower on the small spinnaker in the conditions, the changes always cost you something, however I am really proud that we did them. This time they got away with it... but you just never quite know. The important thing though is that we managed to stay in front of them, so it can't have been too bad. One interesting development of today is Movistar's trac. They delayed coming south a few days ago and all though it looked great on the position reports, we were curious as to how it was going to work out, the next couple of position reports will be interesting. Looks like we are in for some fast and extremely wet sailing between here and the first way point. It will be back out with the helmets to protect ourselves from the icy waters. So, all good for now, back currently at the frantic pace of our 24 hr record run, just as I am typing here the speed hits 27 knots... Masthead Chute, Full Main, Big Staysail.. Pitch Black.. oh yeah, we know all about backing off.. www.volvooceanrace.org |
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| Last Updated ( Friday, 06 January 2006 ) |
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