Pacific Cup '08 - Midnight Monday

Well, its been an interesting day out here today.Probably the most stressful to date as we were pretty much locked into our strategy and where we were going. We just had to sit back, work hard, and see how things worked out.
The first three quarters of the day were similar to the past few with almost 100% cloud cover. There was much celebration onboard when we finally sailed under blue skies for the first time this race.
This was the day that we tried to work our way around the most southerly part of the high pressure area's light airs. How did we do?? Once again, you all are probably in a better spot to know than us. Is our transponder working again?? Only you know what our competition was doing today. Here's what we think/hope. Time will tell if we are right.
1) We saw XL gybe South this morning in relatively light air. She did this while we were pointing right at Hawaii on Stbd. So, unless she found much better winds just a bit to our South, she spend some time going away from Hawaii while we continuted to make progress. We expect to like what we see relative to her at tomorrows position report.
2) Roxanne/Hula Girl - First, we are happy it's no longer blowing 25+ as those two boats seem to have a gear that we've never seen on Morpheus. Based on what we've seen the past two days, they both like sailing higher angles than we do. If that continued today, then they both had to take a more Northerly course than we did. Our hope is that they either sailed into less air than we had, or had to gybe away when we did not and thus (like XL) sailed on an unfavorable course while we continued on towards Hawaii.
Are we right? Wrong? We'll find out tomorrow at 9am.
-Jim
PS> Our fans have been quiet lately. That is usually not a great sign. Hope to hear more tomorrow....
----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com