Monday, March 9, 2020, 1700

Hi all, we are happy to tell you that today we broke free from the high pressure cell (no wind zone) that was impeding our progress at 5am. We are now underway and making good progress toward the tip of the baja peninsula (Cabo San Lucas). We have sun breaking through the stratus cloud layer and the temperatures are getting warmer. Some of the crew are taking off their heavy foul weather gear and changing into tshirts and shorts. Last nite we ate a baked tube pasta in tomato sauce and a green salad with avocado. This morning we heated up and ate spicy jimmy dean sausage sandwhiches.  We still have a lot of food in the freezer and adequate water supplies.

All systems on the boat are functioning normally. Cody, our bowman, patched a small tear in our A1 Genoa headsail with needle and cuban fiber. Our MVP for the day was Steve Natvig, for helping navigator Pete Heck with sorting our some software that wasnt working quite right on our new race computer. We are sailing as quickly as possible in moderate winds and flat seas to reach our goal of Puerto Vallarta, but we dont think we will arrive quite as early in the week as originally hoped. we'll keep yu updated as things progress. see ya...

Saturday, March 7, 2020, 1330

Last nite we had a moon shining most of the night thru a thin layer of stratus clouds above us.The night was cool with light shifty breezes, seas flat. These are sailing conditions where it is quite hard for less skilled drivers to maintain boat speed. Our MVP award for todays report is Craig Chamberlain, one of the best drivers on our boat, who successfully passed our closest competing yacht, Triumph, to put us in the lead position in our class at around 3am last nite. In the succeeding hours We have maintained and infact increased our lead. I caution the reader however that there is a lot more yacht race ahead of us and we know anything can happen. We would like to have a bit more breeze (currently 6kts), but the current forecasts are not good for the winds down course. We are approaching a small but intense high which, once entered, could lead to calm conditions. Not what we want on a racing yacht that depends on fresh breeze to go fast! We are 28 miles off the baja coast near punta san carlos and 168 mi south of san diego but current plans are to move closer inshore to try to catch the night breezes. All systems on the boat are functioning well. We ate a beef stroganoff casserole last night personally prepared ahead by Tom O'keefe and reheated in the boats galley oven and it tasted great!