Reach for it

Yesterday and today have been great reaching condtions, with the overcast finally clearing last night for some skies like we never get to see in So Cal. Today is clear and breezy, 15-18 knots, and Friction Loss is trucking along with reaching kite up doing mostly 7's and 8's. Forecasts look good for the remainder.

Food (cand you tell it has made an impression on us?) continues to amaze. Last night's Moroccan chinken noodle soup ws another knockout. Thursday's dinner was Italian beef stew with pasta, also un-sucky. Tonight we have Paella, and then one final dish until we get to the stuff we're less excited about. And the dry ice is now gone, so tonight's dish is self-thawed, tomorrow's will be beyond thawed.... Should be fine though.

Turns out Lavac's reputation is intact- no human has yet to clog one of their toilets and we can stop kidding him about doing so, and blame him for installing the valve wrong and giving us two day's of dread about a non-functioning head for the rest of the trip, instead.

Otherwise, no significant breakages, we're just sorry not to get those days back spent beating away from the coast. It looks like we've moved back to 2nd place, losing some 20 miles mostly overnight on Wednesday as Nancy found a breeze patch to our north and made big gains while we struggled in a really really big windless hole with sloppy sloppy chop overlaid. Definitely put the "un" in "Fun race to Hawaii".But we're better now, have a little leverage on Nancy, and some good conditions coming up where we think we can catch her.

-C