55° to 57°

I can’t believe how well I slept last night. I kept the boat under-powered in first reef and staysail in winds of less than 20 knots. The waves were still pounding on the boat from various directions but I was certain that this setup would make it through the entire night. That gave me the calm to fall asleep deep. With nothing out to worry, no ice nor traffic, I sleep stretches of up to 1.5 hours. Worried that I might screw things up when drowsy, I pre-program a pattern of alarms at 9 pm, 12pm, 3am, 6am as a skeleton. Then every time I go back to sleep I set a timer according to the situation.

At 6:30am, I decide to switch into day mode, change the staysail for the genoa, have a coffee and finish my previous little blog. Now we’re moving at 6 knots, wind is down to 12-15 knots. Time to shake out the last reef of the main.

In the later morning the wind fades down to 10 knots. Fortunately the crazy sea state calmed over night and I feel confident about breaking out a light wind sail. The forecast predicts beam to pointing conditions for the next 24 hours - that’s worth the effort of setting the Code 0. I might regret this, let’s see.

The Code 0 is the least forgiving sail of all them all. It works a charm when it works but it’s a tricky one. It is a super-stiff kevlar laminate of 120 sqm and trimmed quite hard. When this thing doesn’t behave or the boat rolls more than it likes, the crashing is violent. Air is heavy: at 1.2kg per m3 there are hundreds of kilos crashing into the rig.

The day is wonderful, sun is shining through out, the heater is off. I wash down the aft cockpit with freshwater to get rid of the salt crust that has accumulated yesterday. I bake bread. And speed is sitting around 8 knots, only 20° off course. I hope this situation is going to persist all night.Read more