E-mail from the Southern Ocean

----- Original Message -----

From: win

To: Bruce Schwab

Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2005 8:58 PM

Subject: Hello from Maine SP

Hi Bruce,

Just want you to know that we are avidly following your progress and rooting for you here at MSP.  At least twice a day the troops gather round the monitor to peruse the Vendee Globe and Ocean Planet web sites.  Sorry the reef webs let you down. 

Word from the loft floor is, “don’t let that damn motel by, and watch out for falling anchors.”

Win

From: Oceanplanet
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2005 4:20 PM
To: win
Subject: [work] Re: Hello from Maine SP

Hey Win & Team!

 

Reef webs no fault of yours.  Yet another one of my crazy ideas was run the spectra reef line right through the webbing without a block with the theory that it was static loading. 

 

Well if it WAS static it would have worked, but there was some wiggling since it is difficult to get the fore/aft position of the tie-down to the boom perfect.  So some movement under load, over thousands of cycles....and boom!

 

The mainsail is AWESOME.  I really like it.  The Cuben is really good on chafe, too. Which is nice on this setup with the pusher vangs and all.

 

No more falling anchors I hope.  Also, no icebergs, which will cost me miles.  But we'll see how the gybe angles work out closer to the Horn and after that there's still a LONG way to go.

 

B & OP