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We have had three nice days of sailing with little stress - for a change. The last two days have been particularly friendly. No rain, some sun, and mostly dry decks. Today has been the best so far.

We are doing cosmetic maintenance in the rig. The headrig stays are being tarred. The sheer poles are being oiled. The storm trisail is being dried out prior to storing below. Idle crewmembers are doing hobbies. The below deck area is cleaner and fresher than it has been in over a week. Our distance to the finish is less than nine hundred miles. A lot can happen in those nine hundred miles, but it feels like we are closing in on the finish.

• What is the mechanical advantage of the anchor burton? (7-1)
• How many teeth are on the crank-all? (56)
• How many ratlines are in the main rig?" (86)
• What does "Sadan udloses gummiredningsfladen" mean? (It is Danish for how to inflate the life raft. Our life rafts are made in Denmark and the instructions are in Danish and English.)
• Who is the Mayor of Halifax? (Fitzgerald)
• Where was Jan Miles born?" (Germany)
• What's up with SuperTuff?" (LOTS! was my answer)

Mike McCreery won the game. He got a hat from the Boston Pilots, a Tee-shirt from CBC's Morning Information TV show in Halifax' who interviewed me a couple of time, and a tube of toothpaste. What a haul!

Meanwhile food continues to be a major interest to all hands aboard. With smoother seas, everyone is hungry at least three times a day. One night we had stir-fried chicken with rice. Another night it was lamb stew. We've also had venison. Lunch and dinner meals are often accompanied with bread. It is not practical to buy store bread and keep it. Anyway, bread made aboard ship is a favorite with the crew. It can be brown bread or Irish soda bread or any other variety. Everyone loves it. There are occasional sweet treats. I love Storm Brownies that are a few days old. Brownies become "Storm Brownies" because some are thin and some are extra thick due to the tilting of the pan in the oven as the ship heels. When they are a day or two old, they are stiffer and chewier - just the way I like them! This morning, to my amazement, we had honey dew melon at breakfast. Having fresh fruit this long into a voyage is not a record, but it is unexpected. It is quite easy to keep cabbage a long time as well as potatoes, carrots, and onions. But it was a treat to see bell peppers and cucumber yesterday. Lettuce is long gone, but coleslaw makes a good substitute salad. For the vegetarians in the crew, there is a variety of rice and beans that appear as side dishes for meals that do not feature them as the main entrée. Andy the Cook is outdoing himself day after day.

Another event that stirs special interest is our Sunday matinee. Last Sunday, just before the storm got its full power on, the movie was Jaws. For some reason, several aboard think of it as a classic. I suppose.

Meanwhile we are now enjoying a breeze that sadly takes us into a calm zone. I figure we will be in it tomorrow. The high pressure we have been circling around to the north of has begun to move slowly north as well . This will force us to muddle through the calmer conditions. The fleet behind us will catch up, and the fleet ahead will have new wind and start to stretch out their lead again. While we have closed the gap a little on those ahead and at the same time stretched the distance ahead of those behind us, I don't know if it is enough to preserve our position in fleet once we get into the calm of the high pressure zone.

More later,
Captain Miles

Handicapping is an interesting business. Every vessel is measured and compared dimensionally. However, their real age or design age is also factored in. Other factors are considered as well. In the end, a four decimal figure is created called the Time Correction Factor (TCF). (Pride II's TCF is .6931.) This TCF is applied to the elapsed time of the race, or in the case of these daily reports, elapsed time to the each day's reporting at 1200 UTC each day. (UTC is Greenwich Mean Time, sometimes called Zulu time.)

From here it gets a little puzzling. The way it works, I believe, is that the speed of the last 24 hours is used to calculate the time it would take to finish the remaining part of the race. That hypothetical overall elapsed time found by using the speed of the last 24 hours as the speed for the rest of the race is then multiplied by the TCF. The results for each vessel are compared. If a vessel is going to take longer, it looses to the vessel that will take less time.

We have been watching Jolie Brise closely. She is not in our class (she's a C-I) but is a handsome English cutter some 90 years old. She does well in the races and one can see why after I ran some calculations when she jumped from 5^th to 3^rd in fleet from yesterday to today. Yesterday she was 323 miles behind us. Today she is 321 miles behind us. So how did she catch us when the distance only shrank by two miles? The answer is that her speed for the last 24 hours was nearly the same as ours for the last 24 hours. Although we have less distance to go to the finish, it will take us enough time, at our current speed, to fall behind Jolie Brise if she were to keep her current speed. The only way we will get ahead of her is to go so much faster than her, or for her to fall into less wind while we fall into stronger wind. If this has been hard for you to follow, try imagining the crew understanding this while they look at all they have been through. "We are over 300 miles ahead and still we are falling behind?"

Well, whatever the future will bring, today has been the warmest and driest day yet. The deck is virtually dry its entire length. The sea is the smoothest it has been since a day after the start. We are sailing at 5-6 knots, better than I thought we would. Since it's Sunday, it's Matinee day. The crew watched Cho Young Fat's near classic Chinese martial arts movie Hard Boiled. They also watched the underground comic The Tick. So much for traditional entertainment aboard a traditional vessel!

Today is also another of Andy the Cook's day off. Today Cadet Jennifer and Crew member Ellen handled breakfast and lunch. They did a very nice job, especially in the details. There was cut honeydew melon and oatmeal, or any cereal one wanted, for breakfast. For lunch, there was cus-cus and vegetarian chili with guacamole and chips on the side. For supper, we had spaghetti sauce over cheese-filled tortallini with a dense pan baked bread to dip into an oil and herb mixture. Followed by peanut butter cookies. Anyone for a race across the Atlantic?

Cheers,
Captain Jan Miles