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Meanwhile the crew is learning how to sail Pride II at best efficiency with the existing wind and sea. It is not easy, but achievable if one concentrates. I have seen improvement in all hands and cadets as the day has progressed. Having steady weather has helped everyone learn. They are also learning to walk a canted deck, keeping their arms spread to catch themselves as Pride II lurches though the sea at high speed. They are also learning to look for things that are not right before those things become problems.

Right now, everyone is settling in. Dark is coming on and supper has been consumed with gusto. Soon the ship will become quieter as the off watches disappear into private spaces. Later the waning moon will rise to break the pressure of a dark night. Enjoy it while you can. Soon the moon will not rise at night and the night's full darkness will affect all the watches equally.

Yesterday was our second day of racing. Or, counted a different way, our first full day of racing across the Atlantic. It began lightly and ended in a virtual calm, followed by a slow rise in the wind from the E and NE to become what we are experiencing now.

I spent most of the first day completing logs for both the website and the ship, catching the weather report, and transmitting and recording the race positions of both Pride II and others to/from the Race Committee. With such fickle wind, we had plenty of time to make sure Pride II was sailing as well as she could. The crew spent time going over basics of seamanship with the new cadets, checking the rig for chafe, and keeping an eye on the others in the racing fleet we could still see.

Mir was still in sight and during the virtual calm we saw that she was suffering a bout of being unable to control which way she was headed. At one point, she was headed back to Halifax. Endracht, our dockmate in Halifax, was nearby and took in sail during the calm. Maybe they were doing sail drill, or maybe they were reducing chafe. Arethusa was less than a mile away. She actually got very close during the first night and did not get far during the day. We probably could have arranged to hand each other things during a period when she was particularly close. Jolie Brise was mid-way between Mir and us and was making good use of the light weather by catching up to us from her later Class CII start. Way behind us in the distance, we observed the topsails of the Dar Mlodziezy, but by the end of daylight we could see her no more.

At one point during the calm, we observed a Minke whale.

For added entertainment, while the crew was shredding paper in preparation for throwing it over the side, they made the trash into paper boats and sent them on great voyages.
It is quite common to find the crew being creative in the long periods of status quo when nothing is going on but the steering, log entry, and boat checks. Hanging from the main boom to demonstrate the angle of heel during the race's first good sailing is merely another passing interest.

Coordinating a race between some 40 training vessels (where the important goal is to have fun and be safe) takes a lot of skill. Our race coordinator for this Atlantic Leg is John Hamilton of England. I met John long ago in my early years aboard Brilliant when the American Sail Training Association was brand new. In those days, ASTA was modeled after the English Sail Training Association, then known as the STA. Today John is aboard Mir using both Single Side-Band (SSB) radio and Inmarsat C to communicate with the members of the fleet. All 40 are racing, except three.

Everyday, John first receives a weather analysis from weatherman Herb ashore. We can all listen in as this comes via SSB. Then John re-transmits the weather just before taking the roll call of the fleet. Roll call takes half an hour to forty-five minutes. An hour and a half after roll call, John radios back to the fleet with everyone's position and their standing in both class and fleet. Today Pride II was 1st in class and 7th in fleet. The software for establishing vessel standings is in England, so the information taken at roll call must be recorded in a format that can be sent to England. The information is then run through the computer and the results are sent back to be read to the fleet over the radio. Right now the fleet is fairly close together. Later it is likely to be very spread out which may cause a lot of mischief trying to get everyone's position understood clearly the first time. (NOTE: you can check out the daily position of the vessels in the fleet through the official TallShips 2000 web site. Click on Race Information, then Latest Race Results.)

Before and after the formal radio talk, there is the occasional personal conversation between vessels in the fleet. I have had several conversations with George Moffitt of Brilliant. They are way ahead of us and can act as a bit of a bell-weather for us. Several of the ships started this Millenium event in Europe together and are quite chatty on the radio. Today a radio game, contrived by a crewmember aboard Roald Amundsen, was begun. It is a complicated game and involves research to find the correct answers. Then once a day there is a lengthy radio roll call of the participants to record their answers to questions in the game. I have not yet figured out why it is called "World Pirate Radio."

Today ended with wind continuing to increase from NE to ENE. We can no longer lay the first waypoint. We have also had to bring in the topgallant and get it furled and stowed in its rack on the port rail. We wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Cheers,

Captain Miles