July 16, 2010 Beautiful sunset

"We just had a spectacular Pacific sunset. Words fail.

In the late afternoon, a huge red and white kite appeared on the horizon almost exactly behind us. We're not quite sure who it is (not having caught up on data entry into the plotting software since the other laptop died). So far Spellbound has been able to hold them back but if it's something like a Santa Cruz 50 or the Schumacher 52 from one of the faster divisions which started a day or days after we did, that might be hard to continue.

For tonight as we near the final push to the finish line, we're shortening watches for the drivers (to two hours on then four off, with three primary night drivers).

Mixed clouds plus a moon and hopefully lots of stars should make this night memorable. As we've neared Hawaii, the normal weather patterns have reasserted themselves (temperature, wind levels, etc.)

I'm really pleased with the group: Bob has been a really positive, great host and the rest of the crew is also very eager to hop onto direct racing tasks (trim etc.) as well as boring or even unpleasant maintenance items."

-Nathan