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Nexus - Another brisk 24, 800nm to go!



The wind eased significantly and seas calmed last night, but we were sailing well and making good time. This proves the old adage that "a happy boat is a fast boat" as we were not surging or pitching with the waves and maintained a good constant speed instead of playing "slinky" between 7 and 12kts. This early morning the wind returned strongly with isolated squalls pushing it to 24kt average and 30kt peaks. We ran northward during the squalls to protect the Gennaker and kept the apparent wind below 20 with good speed, but we're now a bit north of where we wanted to be. This is fine to a point because if the wind backs around behind and weakens we'll be in a great wind angle, if it doesn't we can pull the white sails out and do a screaming reach. I'm starting to like the Indian Ocean! We had to hand the call off the Ghost tomorrow, as we cannot hear the boats at the back of the pack on our SSB anymore. From relays in the morning net the next three boats behind us are Chika Lu at 72mn, Alpheratz at 100nm, and third but coming up fast is NDS Darwin at 138miles. It looks like the big cat stopped sandbagging and pulled out some sail yesterday;-) We'll slow a bit as we change sails so they might close on us, but it's all in good fun!

Russ and Laurie on NEXUS 11:00 10/7/2014 at 17 30.6'S;71 32.6E

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