XTR

I have a suspicion that the lighter foiling boats don't or won't handle the heavy seas and really high winds as well as the heavier older boats. Just look in the scrum behind the leaders, the older boats are holding their own in there. I also think that the skippers on the foilers know that they can and will pull away from the pack and as long as they don't break the boat pushing too hard now (there is one well funded program headed home for repairs as I write). In one of the updates today AT's Hub was showing 5+m seas, and I'm guessing in a TS they aren't just a following swell. I think it's a matter of the condition neutralizing the foiling advantage to a degree thus far. ... and JLC is doing a marvelous job. What did I see above somewhere, "...first finish." FWIW those are the thoughts of a guy who has never been anywhere near a racing boat making a totally amateur guess with the data available.

The avg wind speed for the last 4 hours reported on the ATR hub was 6.7kts with 2m waves at 2000, will be interesting to watch those numbers spool up over the next 24 hours while the pressure drops. Lots of info out there to play with this time around.

Looking at his bios it looks like Alex has actually been sleeping some in the last 3 hours.

Zoom in the tracker with wind layer turned on and it looks pretty close. The 115db number is the one that scares me. Three months in hearing protection doesn't "sound"* appealing. *insert groan for cheesy pun

Once upon a time a long long time ago I served on subs as a Navy nuke. Pretty much anyone who has ever served in the engine room of a nuke sub has experienced extreme sleep deprivation at at some point. Most "normal" people haven't been through the wall at 36 to 48 hours. I hit 72 once with the kind of naps he's describing. I've literally fallen asleep standing up leaning against a bulkhead with my knees locked. My experience matches with what Alex is describing, and I wasn't doing anything nearly as complex as what he's doing. (yea, ok, it was running a reactor steam plant but it's still actually pretty easy until something breaks) Something as simple as subtracting inlet and outlet temperatures from a cooler became impossible to accomplish. He needs to rest before he hits that TD.

It's going to be interesting to see how far west they go to get behind the storm. I seem to remember last time someone sailed through the Azores getting south. Going to be sketchy for the next few days.

What do the routing wizards think, the northern boats punch through the front, start to make South toward the Canaries and then catch the back side of the TD? Adds a lot of miles west but my simpleton guesses looks like it keeps them in the wind and at worst reaching and mostly to the stern where they like it. I really enjoy the armchair routing guessing.

My exact first thought. WTF is that all about.

I'm finding the ZIngaro guy kind of cool. He does things wrong, gets stuff broken and gets it fixed, and as far as I've seen he's had 4 bikini's for crew in 5 months, and some come back.

I'm impressed with the effort to generate that list. There are hours there just watching one vid from each. Oh yea, and OEM is better, but I'm fine with aftermarket, esp for the sake of appearances.

So you never saw the black and white season?

I'm guessing that the fools from Sailing Mischief are right now aghast that they are having to pay for their rescue.... It ain't free....

The thing about that one is that today you'll pay pretty close to 100x the original price give or take a little.

Some of the boats in this thread are so ugly to start with that the dodger is really hard to call out as out of place. If your boat looks like a shrimp boat to start with who cares if you build a wheelhouse on top of it. On the other hand, we have this. Every T52 ad on Yacht World quotes Bobs "one of the sweetest sheers ever drawn" comment on the boat. Making it look like a shrimp boat is pretty criminal.

One of my favorites from my remediation jobs... "all we lack is finishing up"