Scarlet Oyster - Scarlet Blog 1

Hi All,

Thought it was about time we submitted a blog in case we still have anyone interested in our progress!

The start just over 2 days ago was a great way to begin this adventure, the end of the line nearest the shore was advantaged by both distance and wind angle, and even more helpfully by an absence of other boats! I am pleased to report we crossed the tine 3 or 4 seconds after the gun at the pin with spinnaker set, we managed to lead on the water for some time before any of the faster racing boats passed us, so that was rather satisfying!

We managed to stay on one gybe for the first 30hrs or so, and with our deep running mode still stay on the advantaged west side of the course. Any further west would be to risk the wind shadow of the islands.

Our predicted route suggested going quite south early, so sailing west into a hole in the wind was something best avoided!

We have been leading on the water in our class since the start, well except for 1 update where sneaky EH01 had got ahead, by virtue of us perhaps not getting west enough!

We had a great tussle with them over first 30hrs, never more than a couple or so miles apart but fin ally slipped away last night.

It seems that we have a choice of route to make now, with either a dive south or continue west to avoid some calm winds in 2 days. Our planned route was South, but our class are all lined up for the western option, some calculations and routing scenarios seem to suggest that the safest option is to cover those to the North, hence we are now blasting west, luckily our Southern position has given us a fast wind angle to sail to get out infront of our class, putting ourselves between them and the finish. I hope!

Anyways all is well onboard, food is great and everyone settling into the rhythm of life at sea. The sea state is relatively gently, so i am able to report no seasickness (i hope this does not curse us!)

Right now we are spinnaker reaching in 12kn of wind making a respectable 8knots plus parallel to the tropic of cancer, which lies a tantalisingly close 3 miles to our south. It looked like it would be our fastest trip to the tropics but we may yet have to wait a few days before we can put our bow south again! It it quite warm anyway, and this gives us a chance to acclimatise!

Jules performed a rig check today, taking advantage of the reaching conditions and lack of rolling side to side, all appears well so that is good to know;-)

All for now from the Scarlet team, located just north of 23 deg N (in case you need to find us!)

Ross