28.52.381N 149.33.901W

Coming off midnight watch.

The time thing is getting weirder. As I explained before, we stay on California time till the race is over, but that means our clocks get further ahead of the sun the further west we go. So the sun went down tonight at 10:30 our time.

Beautiful sunny day clouded over rigfht at sunset to turn into a hell of a gloomy dark night. We collide with a squall every 90 minutes or so and our wind goes from20 to low 30's, changes direction (20 degree header for sailors) and it rains for about 10 minutes, then it all goes back to like it was. You are pretty much on instrument flight rules because it's too dark to see anything else. Eyes glued to the True Wind speed, apparent wind speed and direction, boat speed, and heading. You gotta quickly but without overreacting spin the big wheel to keep all those gages in the right ranges. It's hectic for 3-5 minutes,each time a squall cranks up, then it settles down.

Really good bioluminessence tonight. Bright green sparkles trailing off in our wake like a twin tailed comet. You can see the bursts of green light all out in the gloom where waves are breaking on the surface of the sea. Once in a while, we hit a kind of jellyfish that makes a bright green explosion about the size of a volleyballl. It's pretty neat.

Please excuse my typos. I'm not siure if i've explained it, but I'm typing on a smallish screen at the nav station. There's a pad on the wall next to my head that I have to press against to keep my eyes in sync with the boat movement well enough to see what I'm typing. Right now, we're rolling through about 20 degrees on an axis already tilted about that much, and lurching up and down roughly 8 feet every few seconds, so my typing is going to suffer.

Plus my eyes are tired, so I'm gonna go ride the bucking bunk for a couple of hours.

Whiskey Delta Bravo 2898 VALIS out