Distance covered the last 24  hours: 246.3 nautical miles. Making fast progress with solent and 3 reefs in the main. Read Seb Josse’s account of using his reacher and 3 reefs in the main, talk about front-wheel drive! So tried with solent and worked well. Lashed the two pieces of the broken titanium support railing together with vectran (non-stretch) 6mm line. The two exposed ends of the titanium weld are nasty sharp, and the opening between them had already captured the windward staysail sheet. Took a piece of sticky-back dacron tape and then wrapped it around the edges of the tubing after the lashing brought them together. Think it will do OK.

Late in the afternoon, with increased winds into 30s, went from solent to staysail. As usual, when reducing sail, the boatspeed stayed the same, but the motion and load on the boat was reduced. This is good. I’m aiming at cutting off the corner of the 1000 meter line north of the Kerguelens.

I remember on our New York – Melbourne voyage of 2001, I commented to Murray Lister, who had been Chief Mate aboard New Zealand Pacific, the world’s largest refrigerated container ship, when they rescued us off Cape Horn in November 1990 after our capsize and rerighting, about the beautiful arcing route that the clipper ship Mandarin had made into the deep south, skirting to the south of Kerguelen, and then back up to Melbourne, following the great circle route. Murray said that although their shortest route would have been the same, from Europe to Sydney, “even though we were in a 250 meter (815 feet) ship, we would never have considered taking New Zealand Pacific south of Kerguelen Islands.” NZP rescued us back then so we’ll take his advice now and go north of Kerguelen.