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July 14th, 2016

7/14/2016

2 Comments

 
48 TST had a rough day 2, we made good time with winds cycling from lows of 8 to 9 knts to highs of 16 to 18 knts invery confused sea state with good sized waves coming from many directions, sometimes breaking and sometimes not. This made for a rocking and rolling, pitching and pulling ride above and below deck.  Clearly the “top side” was the place to be and management of seasickness a priority. It’s taking some time to work with the motions of the boat, the heat from cooking, the unsteadiness when using the head, the noise and motion while trying to sleep, but morale is high and spirits good. Everyone is settling into the routine and no one is going to let a little queasiness stop them from doing their best and enjoying every minute.
 
We’ve sailed down our chosen route quite well sometimes leading the fleet sometimes trailing. It has been fun checking the position of the others and a little odd to find us all quite clustered together for such a long time. The nighttime sailing has been exciting with all the other sailboats relatively close together and their lights easily seen around the horizon. With no stars to speak of due to heavy cloud cover the surrounding boat lights provide comfort like distant neighbours with their porch lights on.
 
Sail choice has been challenging in these conditions. We are still head to wind beating into the seas but with the challenging sea state and up and down winds it has been hard to decide when to change sails. Sometime we have light winds so the #1 is the choice, which only lasts till the winds cycle up to 14 or 15 when the #2 is the better choice. Then we’ll find the wind shifting a bit and dropping back down to 8 to 10 where the A-sail would work well, so we wait for the conditions to stabilize just to find the wind shift back towards the front so the #1 is back in order, so up it goes. Back and forth our “dance of the deck sails” continues, hour after hour.  All three sails reside up on the deck at the moment, the #1, #2 and the A-sail. Although the #1 has been our primary sail, the others are ready at a moment’s notice.
 
Dave has had the best ride of the trip so far having been on the bow working on a sail change when his watch captain, Don, missed riding down a rather large wave and instead launched us up over its top then buried the bow in the following trough with a loud Bang. Dave was framed on both sides with walls of water, a good deal of which drained down inside his foulies as gravity restored order and brought the water, and Dave back down to earth and the deck. Soaked clean through there was never a complaint from Dave, instead his comment was “That was refreshing!”.
 
And so it goes with TST. Everyone pulling their weight, all pulling together, managing their personal needs and those the boat and crew, acutely aware of the task at hand and the task ahead. It was a challenging day but very rewarding.  As Don stated: The Heros In Racing Take Every Event Normally
 
 
Quote of the day:
 
“Guys... are you talking or are you Doing?”
2 Comments
Marie Mortimer
7/14/2016 10:04:37 pm

OMG!.....I can just see/hear Dave now! You guys are amazing....go team go!

Reply
Christof Marti
7/14/2016 10:12:59 pm

Awesome - Dave really needed that, I can see it. Good stuff, great read. Love it. Go team go!

Reply



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    Team String Theory

    Is a competitive yacht racing team with a focus on offshore sailing. We will compete in the 2016 Vic-Maui International Yacht Race.

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