”I was just about to fall asleep behind the wheel”, Richard Mason says and put his head on the hatch when he comes up from emptying the water in the ballast tanks.

His eyes is barely open and luckily he is about to take off to the his bunk. We just have to do some gybing before…

We have made pretty big gains on Puma and Ericsson 4 during the night and morning. And we have increased the distance to Telefónica Black.

We are still making good speed with the big A4-gennaker up heading northeast towards Öland. It’s been a very fast trip so far and if the wind doesn’t drop we will, touch wood, be ahead of the scheduled in to Sandhamn.

Gaining again

It’s a fantastic morning out here. We are steadily logging 20 to 25 knots of boatspeed, the sea is not to bumpy and now we have only around 400 metres to Puma pointing straight forward from our bow.  Ericsson 4 is about a mile up to windward and a bit ahead.

If we keep this pace, we will be at Almagrundet outside Sandhamn in 10 hours. But the forecast and the routing are still uncertain and it could for sure take longer.

Richard Mason is down below spray gluing a sail and Anders Dahlsjö and Eivind Melleby are packing a spinnaker, while the rest are up on deck pumping the waves.

Beside me is Aksel, who is sitting in the navdesk rubbing his eyes, trying to figure out the best route.

He is pretty hard to get in contact with when he is concentrating, but I just heard him saying; ‘Seems like it will get lighter’.

Gustav Morin - MCM