Finally... a day we can work with!!! Four runs today.

What a glamour day. Brought to us by sheer patience. This season down here in Walvis Bay hasn't been a good one. It's either been blowing like crazy... or nothing. Today was just right and we were ready to make the most of it.

The new steering slot, which alters the way the rudder moves to my inputs, arrived today and we didn't hang around in fitting it to the boat. Thanks once again to Uwe at JAZ MARINE in Cape Town for chasing this up for us. As the wind filled in we began to dress accordingly in preperation. The wind had built significantly by the time we got onto speed-spot and sure enough... we had another windy day on our hands. i tried a startup closer to the shore and then set VESTAS SAILROCKET off on a course. She wouldn't hold up to the beach over 40 knots so instead of trying to correct it with a totally new steering configuration... I abandoned the run. The wind dropped slightly so we headed back up. I was determined to get as many runs in as I could so that I myself could develop a solid routine for starting sequences. On the next run I just sheeted in to 20 degrees and watched what happened. She was reluctant to bear away at the start but as she accelerated she settled down onto a nice course running parallel to the beach. I could almost sail her hands free. We weren't going very fast as we were well sheeted out... but VSR was very well behaved. It showed that I don't necessarily have to oversheet and use large steering inputs to get her onto the course.

In the next two runs I focused on doing tighter 500 meter runs withe the final run involving a 500 meter run with the boat fully configured as she should be i.e. wing sheeted in to 10 degrees and the flap on. The wind had dropped to high teens but I was still able to feel the balance of the boat, effectiveness of the new steering system and just have a play with her.

We ahve never done four runs with the wing before so I think it was a great exercise for the whole team. The quality of the data is now much better than it ever has been so thanks to PI RESEARCH for helping us chase the 'gremlins'. We now sit surrounded by laptops digesting all this data so that it can be used to our advantage as early as tomorrow.

After the grounding on Run 61 we moved the beam back forward but it appears that it could now come back a few degrees as it seems that we have lee-helm where VESTAS SAILROCKET is trying to bear away from the beach a bit too hard.

I feel pretty happy with today. I think we have learnt a lot recently and I'm pretty sure that we are on the right path with this latest steering system. We need days like this. If we are going to ever max this boat out then we can't just go out on top end days and see what happens. We need to be well practiced and confident enough in our craft and level of development to be able to go out with a practiced approach and totally master a top-end day.

Tomorrow is set to be windy so we better be fast learners...

Cheers, Paul.