San Diego to PV '08: Day 4 - Early AM - Perfect!!

3AM
Just got off one of the best watches ever. If I could paint, this would be a good one!!
Big bright moon right in front of me. 20-24 knots of breeze, big spinnaker up, and swells that have finally spaced out and become fairly regular. The "crazy ivan" waves coming from unique directions are finally gone.
Driving was simply a matter of pointing the boat down the "yellow brick road" made by the reflection of the moon, and picking my angles to jump on the waves. Beautiful!!
Patrick might learn to like this some day if he ever gives it a try. He could apply all that he has learned surfing to the problems of catching the perfect wave!!
Earlier this evening between sunset and 8pm was an entirely different matter. The sun went down, but there was no moon. So we are talking about a black night. Very dim horizon for reference and only the dim lights of my instruments to drive by.
We had winds up to 27 knots at that point, and twice I ended up exceeding 20 knots during a very extended ride on a wave. Hard to explain to those that have never done it, but it's one of those things that seem great now, but at the time, "not so fun"!!
After the second time hitting 20 knots, I called for the spinnaker to come down in order to "protect my record" and ensure that we'd have a spinnaker to finish with!!
We sailed for 4 hours under main/jib and still our speeds were 10+ all the time.
Should be a big day. Roll Call will tell us who did a better job at sailing "full on" all day, and who also had minor/major issues like ours.

Winds starting to drop now. Our info shows that its already lightened up inside. Our theory is that we have more wind and will continue to have more for many hours to come. As the wind gets lighter we'll need to sail higher angles. If it all works out, what looks like extra distance sailed to get outside up near Point Cedros will look smarter at roll call this morning.
If not, then perhaps we blew it!!
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