After ten hours of very intense sailing in the South China Sea, we reached the waters of the Philippines. It took us six tacks to get in between the islands of the north along Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing to leeward of us. SCA and Brunel decided to head north before the rest of the fleet.
Bearing north…north!? Yes, north. Not towards south where New Zealand is. This is due to the routing showing that we will get more wind there, and just for sailing 300 miles in that direction we will be rewarded with excellent sailing conditions.
After 3 days sailing upwind the sea state improved between the islands, and we stopped banging into the waves as we had so far. Those of us who are seasick could recover a bit, and the guys preyed on the leftovers from the past two days, till there was nothing left.
When the sun came out we had Alvimedica behind us, who decided to change course as to get the wind more from the side, hoping to gain miles on us to leeward.
The current didn’t benefit us and made us lost more ground to the Turkish-American boat.
In a short time the four boat fleet reached the coast of the Pamoctan islands, a real paradise. We kept tacking and crossing each other with this spectacular background, sailing north looking for the fresh breeze. Now this is going to be another “big casino”, since there’s lot of options ahead of us.
#vamosMAPFRE!
Fran Vignale