Sunday, June 15th: 06:30

It was a wild, windy and wet night. Fast and furious. With the full moon, sailing was outstanding, but quite extreme. The kind of stuff that great memories are made of. With the full moon, the big waves looked like silver mountains with the glitter of snow and ice. That was quite a sight. Around sunrise on the starboard side, there was a setting full moon and on the port side the rising sun. Quite a sight! I’m personally exhausted from steering the boat for a total of 7.5 hours since the start of the race, but can’t sleep with all that adrenaline pumping. By 5:30 am the wind had lightened up to 10 knots with the remains of the swell from last night, make “the waves much bigger than the wind”. It was time to make some rapid sail changes and avoid being stuck in the wind shadow of one of the Channel Islands. But Pyewacket is nowhere in sight this morning. Where are they? Did they pass us when we got into the lighter winds? We’re going to significantly over stand, anticipating that weak Catalina eddy. It goes against the forecasts, but the different buoy reports around the LA area seem to indicate that this is the weather scenario that is unfolding.

Full moon setting right by Mo's head on starboard

Sunrise on port. Where is Pyewacket? Did we leave them in the dust?