July 23, 07:38 PST, 825 Nautical Miles from Honolulu

A dark night and a miracle recovery, we are very lucky.

We limped along all night. That piece of kite still wrapped around the top of the keel interferes with the carefully architected flow of the water under the hull. You can feel it at the helm and at high speeds it’s unstable making it even tougher to control our high speed ride. Richard took the first watch from Midnight to 3 am, and I took the second one from 3 am to 6 am. Now we’re both up. Its dark. The squalls have all collapsed in the early morning and so all that we have above us is a deep overcast.

All in all we are very lucky: We have a kite up and are sailing at 90% of our potential. In the 20 to 25 knot puffs we’re happily sitting on more than 16 knots of boat-speed. That’s great. Now for the 9 am position report. We know we are now probably trailing all the competitors. We’re half-way to Honolulu so there is plenty of runway left.