"The last 24 hours have been fairly pleasant sailing VMG downwind in 15-20 knots of wind with a few gybes thrown in. I have still got a fairly big swell from the west so we still get up on a good surf every now and again.
All concentration is on the ex Cyclone Claudia and where I need to meet her to get the maximum gain. I am studying two weather models, the GFS model from the US and the ECMWF model from Europe. They pretty much agree on what is going to happen in the next 36 hours but after that some details are different.
My biggest worry is not being able to get to the south again but that is a little far ahead for the models to be accurate. For the moment I have to play the weather ahead and concentrate on my placement for Claudia.
I have not managed to get any repair work done on the rudder cassette yet but tomorrow morning the wind will go light and i hope to get some boatbuilding done. I hope it wont be raining. My energy saving is going to plan and the team are working out a way for me to build a new bracket for the hydro generator. This will be a long term project and I probably wont be able to fix anything to the boat until after Cape Horn but the building of it I can do slowly over time."
Alex
From : Alex Thomson
