44/44S 15/08E, course 075T, 12.5 knots, 224.8 nautical miles sailed in past 24 hours. None of the files showed the flat calm this morning for a whole bunch of hours. Found myself at 1.7 knots desperately trying to go S for more wind, so headed SW. It sounds bizarre, but moving ahead in the wrong direction is better than going nowhere at all. Wasn’t far enough to the east in the strong wind train of the last days to get to the corner where it wrapped around the high and gave the mid-pack group a chance to gybe south, so when I got a shift myself, went southeast, but not enough, and lost a lot.

In calm, switched pilot to fixed boat speed, then when the breeze finally came back, and with full main and reacher we were surging to 17/18 knots, pilot was wildly all over the place, why? wracking brain for solution, for Perf2, Narrow, Sport, RGAN (B&G users will recognize nomenclature), grabbed helm in wild broach, got it back, back to pilot, wild broach again, finally the little molecule of a solution came into my tired brain (only 45 min sleep in last 20 hrs) – put it back on boat speed! Did, and what a difference it makes when the pilot is not trying to steer at 18 knots thinking its only going 4 knots, and when it can actually make a True Wind Angle calculation. Need a blackboard in the cockpit to write notes to myself.