0817z 47/11S 53/43E, south east of Isles Crozet. Distance covered in last 24  hours: 186.3 nautical miles. The wind is down from its hear hurricane strength last night, and the leftover sea is big and messy, and the boat is bouncing off waves in every direction, very unpleasant. We had steady 55/57 knots with periods in 60s also. The storm jib did good work, keeping us on a beam reach to get past the lee shore of isles Crozet. When we started down that south side, it was a nice broad reach, and it looked as if we’d be able to get past before the wind changed, but no….

It was very cold. The inside of the cabin is like a lake with the condensation dripping everywhere. When the wind finally started to reduce, It took several naps. The last one, I was thrown out of the bunk, but high enough so that I didn’t come through the opening in the bulkhead, but in fact fetched up on the bulkhead with my head, cushioned by my ear. It hurts.

Later, when the sun came up, and we got the staysail and 3rd reef back up to get moving again, I had some granola and milk, and sat in the beanbag. I felt like falling asleep there, but reminded myself it would be a big mess if I did, so I didn’t–all the way up until I did, and spilled the granola all over the beanbag, the floor, and me.

I was using the watch alarm on the radar through the first part of the storm, until on a check up forward, I noticed that with 55 knots of wind, the hinged radar dome simply blows 90 degrees to leeward, so that it would not be scanning the horizon, but a vertical slice of the sky. I turned off the radar and went with the Activ Echo. When putting up the staysail in the morning, I saw that the port side titanium support rail near the mast had been broken at a weld. The reacher and genaker halyards were tied there, and the swaying of the two halyards in the violence of the storm had broken the titanium weld.

I’m stunned and saddened by the misfortune of Bernard Stamm, a fantastic ocean sailor, and very friendly and kind. Hopefully Cheminees can be salvaged to sail again.