Puma Leg - 4 Day - 6

Did you know that there is fairly strong front coming? Only from about 500 sources if you are an avid Volvo Race follower.  Which makes notes like this a bit tricky. 

First of all, to friends and families of the 11 guys on this boat: we know there is a storm coming and we are 100% ready for it.  Whew.  I said it and I feel a lot better.  In fact, the mood on the boat is as upbeat as I have seen.  Not that we are really looking forward to two days of discomfort, but I think we all are in good spirits because we are doing well in the leg and we are as prepared as we ever could be for this little issue that is coming our way.  Do the best we can and really, really try not to break the boat to take us out of the leg or, worse still, the race.

And it is a nice time to have seasoned veterans on a boat like this, who have seen it all before.  We have talked through many different scenarios and there wasn't much that we could bring up that someone on the team didn't say – ‘oh yeah, when I was on 'so and so' in the 1994 'such and such' race...’ You get my drift.

We are really sorry about our friends on Green Dragon breaking their headstay.  Good guys on a good team that deserves better.  Plus, we have the exact same headstay, so we are watching all parts and pieces with interest.  Ours is brand new and we are quite comfortable with it at this point.

Media man Ricky Deppe is crawling around the boat with his video asking everyone ‘how they feel’ with a storm on its way.  Well Ricky, we all feel fine and we are looking forward to 48 hours or so from now when the winds back off and we can get back to full time racing.  But for now, we will go into a bit of common sense mode and make our way from the Philippines to Taiwan.  Two places that again I never thought I would be writing about when I was racing a sailboat.  We have great PUMA friends and supporters in both countries and we want to pass along a big hello and simply ask that next time, order us a bit better weather when we come through.

Kenny Read - Skipper