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Sunday early morning, coming up for watch.  You know the retiring watch is bored ... they're projecting hand-puppets onto the main sail.  I can't remember that last time I saw THAT!  Amusing.  The light, stable winds are starting to pick up.  And GOOD NEWS ... the winds has cleared the fog.  I see stars for the first time this trip.  Nice sight!  :)

The increased winds required that we peel chutes from the 1A to the 3A.  We do so smoothly.  But an hour later we notice a rip developing in the foot of the 3A.  Wind has increased to 20 knots true.  We douse the 3A and tape it back together as fast as possible while running bareheaded.  I grabbed a pic of the intense efforts to put her back together at 1:30 AM.

We re-hoist ... but there's a BIG problem.  The gear where the spinnaker pole comes into the mast is ... TARFU'd.  Big time.  We just can't fly the kite properly until the pole situation is fixed.  We douse the kite and hoist a small headsail.  This is a big disappointment, we're in PRIME spinnaker running conditions and we can't "let the big dog run".  Our boat’s configuration is specially designed to take advantage of our oversized spinnaker pole … with it we run FAST … but without a pole we can’t even try to fly our oversized kites.  :( !  :( !

Our three best "fix-it" guys (all from the off watch) cluster on the foredeck, cannibalizing a genoa car to repair the spin pole car.  I get a nice piece of helm time and record boat speed of 13.4 knots in 20 knots of breeze (a personal best).  Fun.  Mild following seas, pretty good surfing conditions.  “How’s that spin pole coming guys?” we all wonder silently.  We know they’re working ferociously hard on the problem.  We keep quiet and let them work.

Finally around 5:30 AM the pole car is fixed.  We re-hoist the 3A ... and our sleigh ride truly begins.  Wind has built to 26 knots true, off the port quarter, and we are CHARGING down the face of the waves.  Trimmer Dobbs and helm Doug Lynn are in synch, talking, working.  We average about 13 knots and record a Falcon best 20.4 knots around 8:30AM.  THIS is fun ocean racing.  This belongs on the cover of the brochure!

I'm the last of my watch to come off the rail, 3 hours after our watch ended.  I had been dozing perched on the port quarter, but it was impossible to sleep properly and I need some decent rest prior to going back on at noon.  The crew weight on the port quarter helped to stabilize the boat, but we need our sleep and can’t stay there indefinitely.  9:30 AM, I’m dozing (port side, low), listening to the daily position reports, when the boat broaches and lurched out of control.  We spun to windward, then to leeward, then we heard, "ALL HANDS ON DECK!" "Kite coming down!"
My spot in those evolutions is the "sewer" ... as the kite came down I gathered it in.  I realized right away why it had to come down ... it was in pieces.  Although the tapes were intact, most of the head was just GONE.  Once we had it in the cabin Chris Buncke, the other watch bow-man and a sailmaker for North took one look at it and ordered, "Rando, just bag it."  That sail was not repairable during THIS race.

The blast reacher was on deck so we hoisted that right away.  Before I bagged the tattered remains of the 3A I asked, "What do you want, the 2A or the Jib top?"  Either of those was the "next best thing" compared to the 3A, which was the prefect sail for those conditions.  After ten minutes of deliberation on deck the call came to "hand up the jib top".

We hoisted it promptly and speed increased from 7 to 8 knots (down from an average of eleven).  Oh well ... it was painful but that's life.  The loss was only temporary, though ... after an hour and a half of wind speed falling to steadily under 20 we judged conditions safe enough to hoist the 2A spinnaker.  (The danger was that if we blew up the 2A then we would be SERIOUSLY screwed.)  Well, the 2A did very nicely for us in those somewhat lighter conditions ... but we DID baby it a bit.  Average speed increased again to 10 – 11 knots.

Later that morning w exited the Gulf Stream.  Until now our strategy had been determined largely by the powerful current of the Gulf Stream.  Now that the race was more than half over we decided that wind was more important than what little current still affected us.  We went just slightly west of the rhumb line, protecting ourselves from a lighter breeze at the end of the race (we thought).

All Sunday afternoon we proceeded at 9 - 12 knots boatspeed.  It was sunny, warm, and beautiful.  We saw a whale, I grabbed a few pics of his (her) tail.  Dobbs reported that it totally breached and got big air time.  Sweet.
Late Sunday night, came on deck, it was dark and nearly moonless, wind was shifty, seas were lumpy and unsettled.  The 2A kite was up, we were steering 140 degrees True Wind Angle, mostly right down the rhumb line.  The only problem was that the winds were predicted to lighten, then lighten more.  We had a bad watch, none of the drivers seemed able to "find the groove".  We considered changing to the 1A kite but the wind held just a bit too strong.
Half an hour prior to watch-end the wind lightened enough to go to the 1A.  After the change the boat seemed more stable.  Off at 2AM.  4:30 AM, "All hands for sail change".  The wind had gotten lighter still and we went to the Code 0.

5:55 AM, grabbed my breakfast (two hard boiled eggs and a tangerine) and went on deck. Early bird got the worm and I got first trick at the helm.  Sun was just coming up, wind was 8 - 14 knots true, still off the port side, and with the code 0 up we were making 8 - 11 knots boatspeed.  It was perfect condition for that large sail  ... and we made hay while the sun shined.  This was turning into a HISTORICALLY unusual Bermuda race – I doubt ANYONE can recollect so much wind from an angle off the port quarter.