Maximilian - Nearly but not quite....

The only trouble with simbos is you need to plan direction changes well in advance and with just 80nm to finish in Santa Marta we are running a bit low on wind as we have come a little too close in shore! I remember at the weather briefing being told the wind freshens as you run in but obviously I wasn't paying attention as to where exactly ....Made another record 24hrs yesterday 225nm average 9.4kn with some wonderful sailing in some biggish waves. 25nm or so off the border between Venezuela and Columbia the water changed from deep blue to turquoise, just like that - beautiful.Life on board has settled into an easy pattern, no real dramas- had to re fix a bathroom door which was trying to throw itself into the aft cabin after a big roll.Battery charger is doing that weird thing again. read more...

Maximilian - Simbo Sleigh Ride

Evening all, its an official sleigh ride out here. Plenty of breeze 25kn+ and a cheeky squall which touched 40kn on our instruments. Been playing cat and mouse with the squalls on the radar and aside one very unpleasant sail flog we are doing ok. Another day of records for Max, 206nm covered with a maximum of 17kn down a wave of course! Not bad for an old cruising boat :)In more mundane news, the battery charger is back on form now after plugging the laptop into it and giving it a talking to (reset); gave the batteries a big charge from the now functioning genset so thats kind of 2 boxes ticked off- for the moment!Looks like we are doing pretty well in terms of fleet position, we have about 370 to go so plenty of time for us to mess up yet. Hoping there will be a Columbian techy that can. read more...

Maximilian - Breeze on

Charging day of all Max's records being broken; hoping that's all that's broken of course !The route to Santa Marta suits our downwind set up nicely and we hit a storming 16kn late evening yesterday!Some niggling issues with the genset and charger plus the SSB has given up completely now. Few jobs in Santa Marta...:/!Otherwise all good; glad Tez cooked a lot before we left as its pretty rocking and rolling out here in 25+kn ...... read more...

Maximilian - Prep, Start and Apples

Our first blog from Moody Max! After all the prep and a simply massive Xmas and New Year with family and friends we said goodbye to beautiful St Lucia at noon yesterday. The time we had for final preparations was fine and all was good until the SSB packed up on its first real test and Apple (bless them) decide to update iOS making it incompatible with the iridium mail app. Luckily Tez had a back up back up back up back up android samsung that works. Blogs therefore will be short as typing on this phone isn't the easiest.Anyway, thanks to all the WCC team for a great build up and send off. We are beasting along with our Simbo rig pulling us pretty much dead down wind at 270T. We managed a new record at 14.5kn on a wave earlier so officially this is a sleigh ride.Autopilot came up with a. read more...