Another foggy day at 44:30 north. Good news that the water temp is up from nasty 4.3 Celsius this morning to acceptable 10.4 right now. Heater still working!

Also good news that no more ice cold spray flying along the deck as the wind has dropped and headed, moved left, as predicted. We are now coming under influence from the high pressure system centred 500 nm ENE of us.

During a large part of the day we had the wind 20 degrees further right at the masthead compared with deck level. This is due to the fog. Suddenly the fog lifted away and we could steer a 20 degree higher course with out any change in wind direction at top of mast! When no fog the air mass at 30 metres comes down to the surface, an interesting phenomenon.

At lunch today James (Jaime Arbones) found that we had a small aquarium on starboard side of the deck. A recess in the deckhouse had filled up with water and in that small pool of water we found a tiny little fish swimming around, looking very lost! The 10 cm fish had a very lucky day as James gently lifted it by its tail and dropped it back into the ocean. Probably it had travelled about 40 nm with us and might now have a hard time finding its friends...

We are now only 60 nm from the scoring gate which simply is crossing the longitude 52 38 west. We decided yesterday not to focus on the scoring gate, and instead focus on the south west corner of the ice box at 43 N and 50 W. If wind direction does not change too much, it is a possibility that the four leading boats to the north of us could be behind us after we are forced to tack into a south westerly direction. Delta Lloyd would be close to us if we tack as she is SW of us...Time will tell.

After the ice box it looks like the high is moving off to the SE and that we will be picked up by a new low that should bring us almost all the way to Galway. The low will offer fast running conditions which is not our favourite conditions...We certainly need to be ahead at the ice box...!

Oops..! As I write this we hit something hard on port side...just a hard crash, not stopping the boat. We hoisted the daggerboard and found some small damage at the back end of the board and a greasy, oily smell from its leading edge. Seems like we hit some animal again...

Today David has made a stronger seal for the wet box above the keel - the box that filled up with water a few hours after the start. No problem now, but when we are going fast, after the ice exclusion zone, there will be more water pressure on the lid of the wet box...Should now be strong enough.

That was all from the Black boat close to enter Grand Banks.

Yours
Roger Nilson - navigator