by Rich Wilson | Dec 24, 2016 | Ship's Logs
“This is Rich Wilson, aboard Great American IV. It’s Christmas Eve and we are down here south of Australia. We’re going to give you a little video ship’s log today, to show what I’m looking at as far as the big storm that’s coming...
by Rich Wilson | Dec 23, 2016 | Ship's Logs
One must be careful of the Routing function of navigational software. It will give you the theoretical fastest route, but may be impractical to sail. Earlier today, the software saw a gybe south to go to the Antarctic Exclusion Zone, then gybe back when the next...
by Rich Wilson | Dec 21, 2016 | Ship's Logs
We had a fantastic encounter today when my friend Eric Bellion came roaring up from behind us and passed us close aboard. I had seen him coming on the position reports over the last few days. He has a ‘secret weapon’ in a special sail that Michel...
by Rich Wilson | Dec 20, 2016 | Ship's Logs
Yesterday’s rush with the big fractional gennaker was amazing. We hit 27.5 knots of boat speed on 29 knots of wind. For me, I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Those speeds may be natural for Armel Le Cléac’h or Alex Thomson at the front...
by Rich Wilson | Dec 19, 2016 | Ship's Logs
Before the night, it was grey, grey, grey all day as we were in between then depressions. Then, as in the lyrics of Camelot – ‘for one brief shining moment’ – we had sunshine and the temperature shot up to 18 centigrade. I jumped at the chance to have a...
by Rich Wilson | Dec 18, 2016 | Ship's Logs
Last night we had a high speed power sail, still it seemed tacked onto the tail end of the previous storm. 25-30 knots of wind, 2 reefs in the mainsail, plus solent (J2), and with 25 knots of wind, we might surge to 22/23/24/25 knots of boat speed, simply thundering...
