The last 150

O.K. sports fans, this race has come down to the last one hundred fifty miles. It has been a long and slow affair, with all the really low winds (when they could be called winds at all) keeping even the Big boats within reach. Cipango seems to be sitting in a very good position, if all the possible conditions fall into the right order, things could work out very nicely for this big blue cork (as my boss likes to call her) to take home some bling. Every night we run into some sort of situation that seems to set us back, at least in our minds, to some distant position in the pack. When morning roll call is completed and all the boats have been plotted for their position we realize that we are still in a place within real striking distance for first. The first day we jumped out of the blocks to take command of first position only to end up sitting in the calm with fifteen other boats from the next division up and couple from our own. When they all seem to get the wind before we did, we thought they had left us in the dust, only to find out the next morning that we were ahead of all but three. Every morning we think we have been passed by the fleet because of calm or even having to wrestle with what we call our "sea monster" (it was a massive kelp bed that we ran straight into in the middle of the night and had to tear loose from it by hand). This has all taken longer than we expected but should be across the finish line Sometime in the evening on Thursday, provided the wind doesn't shut down again. So the sprint is on and we may do better than even we expected, we will let you know how the drama unfolds.
Keep checking in,

Johnny T.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see:

http://www.sailmail.com