Posts from the Ràn yacht racing team

 We are thursday 29th of November and we are on a port gybe - we gybed at 5.30am this am, we changed direction. We are now aiming at Haiti now, and Cuba 1 hour ago, a little further south than Bermuda before we gybed. We are latitude at the level of Agadir in Morocco on the East and now at the level of Jacksonsville, florida on the West side. As for our longitude, we are already showing in land of Brazil. We are still ahead of the fleet with 1635 miles to go for us to reach destination. Our boat speed is back to 20 knots with a wind speed of 18 knots or so. The moon is also back with us, giving us an amazing reflection on the water. Sadly still too dark to capture the scene with a picture. The sea has turned to an aluminium colour, a silver filter on the surface moving very slowly with those long waves. All this produced by the moon light and the sea reflection. The clouds are also with light - they have a feel the skies painted by Dutch masters of 16th century. Bruegel or van de Velde are names which accompany us when watching the clouds. They have perfect shadows, have different tones of grey, are round as you would imagine them on a perfect picture. Someone on board said they were like the "Simpson's clouds". The clouds are just perfectly positioned in the sky to give the sky some animation but not too many nor too messy. The perfect cloud formation!

As for the rest, life goes on. We had an open question which still remains un-answered as too many of us have different opinions this morning. On one hand we have some issues with one furler which we need to repair (the loads are always so heavy) and on the other hand an issue with the toastie-machine which is also in need of attention and repair. So the question is: should we fix the furler before the toastie maching? Should we make sure we can eat and toasts those amazing "croque-monsieur" toasts with marmite or should we make sure we can change to another sail with the repaired furler? What comes first?