Battleship

Conrad up to 13th now in a tight pack, would be amazing if he could finish in the top 10. But the main thing is to finish I imagine, only 18500 miles to go.

If you have forward lowers you don't need a baby stay, a rigger will definitely be able to help.

Sounds like a rig with little or no prebend, some do that, a baby stay will usually fix it. Cranking on the backstay or putting the inner forestay on can help . A rig check won't hurt for peace of mind regardless.

Or in the case of Cheeki Rafikki an dodgy repair was allegedly done and was impossible to pick up. Of course, many have done thousands of miles, there is a reason there are so cheap. If a Car maker said one in every hundred thousand cars the axles will fall off without warning would it be acceptable? Not a problem if you were backing out the drive but what about doing 100 down the motorway?

I think the major problem with them, is due to a lack of good access and the way the floor pan is constructed it is difficult to tell if it has been popped off in a grounding. So a boat can look mint but be a death trap.

CQS should be close to finishing, apparently were 3 hours away just after 11 am. Trackers only work in cell phone range and are not mandatory.

These guys base their business on DSS http://www.infinitiperformanceyachts.com/ The 36 footer looks impressively rapid don't know how they would go compared to something like Crusader.

Might want to check out the Vendee Globe Knot you, the top 5 boats are using them. Now that's a zero

I think Maitre COQ is an older boat retro fitted with foils, the older boats don't have to comply with the one design mast and keel so are potentially much more powerful. The one design mast boats need to monitor load cells as they are righting moment limited due to the mast. Pretty confident Boss lost most of a foil but he has been in better air most of the time and in heavy running the foils can be a hindrance.

The line has to be kept to starboard, there are major penalties for crossing it. Pretty sure they don't revise it in the area the boats currently are. The good news is apparently the Boss has a spare foil which can be inserted from the deck, once he trims the end off the broken one it can be removed.

Mainly race boats and not mass produced, Anarchy, Crusader, Bushido and the General Lee a few years back probably missing a couple.

With these things being such a liability maybe the insurers should make the owners of Euro boats pay a premium so the rest of us aren't lumbered with the cost.

The dotted line is the ice limit, word is that the ice limit in the Indian Ocean is going to be reviewed. A nice new feature of the giss.ee tracker is if you click the little globe to show the Lat/Lon grid there are range lines showing where the boats will be at the current speed as you move the weather slider. Great tracker. Looks like Boss might get a bit of a jump in the next 6 hours as the others fall off the edge of the Low, don't know how he will manage if they get any upwind on Port tack though.

Video here explains the mounting, looks kind of like the clips they use to hold plastic car bits on. http://www.fastmount.com/en/videos Doesnt really explain how the come off again but I imagine it would take a fair bit of levering.

I think they just had it up for the delivery as a steadying sail whilst under motor.

Thompson barely missed a beat through the doldrums, now out to a 90 mile lead which looks to increase over the next little while. Nice tracker here http://gis.ee/vg/ which has a windy.tv overlay.

It's still being held by the crane in that shot.

https://www.bigboatracing.com/about-boat/

Something like that, was a hush hush type project but I guess the cut cat is out of the bag. Oh dear.

Can't help but wonder why worksafe is involved with pleasure boats at all? Do electric/hybrid vehicles require the same standard of compliance as they have similar systems? And what about Caravans and motor homes.

I quite like it, sort of like a big imoca 60 rather than a big volvo 70 of the others (speedboat etc.) The wings may be a step to far but time will tell, certainly more streamlined then the outriggers of the 60's. Might get a sneak peak of it sailing over the next few weeks.

Mine did have a fully sealed floor but all the ply was rotten so I just got rid of it, seems there was a lot of paranoia about sinking back then. I'll see if I can dig anything up, but I basically ripped everything out and started again as with the layout it had there was F all room. Built a new Vee berth up the front and put a small sink and bench to port.

Lets hope it works, certainly looks pretty radical especially compared to Comanche which is boring and conservative by comparison. http://www.sail-world.com/Australia/Round-the-World-racer-rolls-out-Supermaxi-conversion-in-Tauranga/149496

marinetraffic.com, I think he is close to going out of range again.

HB gybed back out again, looks like he's staying close for now though.