Pacific Cup '08 - Transponder broken? Radio issues fixed. Doing what we came here for...

Sorry for the lack of posting yesterday. Working hard to sail fast and go the right way. Seem to be doing a relatively decent job of doing that, but can not seem to hold onto Hula Girl. Lost 60 miles two days ago, and 30 yesterday?? Their rating says they will be faster than us, but there's something else at work here. They are sailing very well.
(While you can't send suggestions our way, if you think you know what we should be doing better, please post comments to the blog. We'll enjoy reading your ideas once we reach Hawaii!)
Sounds like our transponder is not sending updates. Sorry about that. Can't explain why that would be. It's in the same place we've always attached them, and we are not aware of any damage issues. You can probably find a page on www.pacificcup.org that gives our daily 0900 position.
Had some issues with the radio yesterday. Crawled into the aft locker to find that the ground connector on the tuner was loose to the point where it was almost disconnected. Fixed that and all seems well today.
All onboard were sad to learn yesterday of Mark Rudiger's passing. I'm sure that there are lots of other sailors out here feeling the same way. Makes you think a bit and perhaps focus on appreciating what we are doing all the more.
Will spend today trying to come up with a strategy to get us in a position for possible gain on Hula Girl. All agree that waiting for them to screw up is probably not the way to go. Not willing to swing for the fences at the expense of possibly opening the door for others to pass us.
Always interesting...
-Jim
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