DAY 6 - July 14 2018 Pt.1

Here is a little update of the crew aboard :

"After yesterday’s mix-up between the 13th and the 14th a.k.a REAL BASTILLE DAY, time to elaborate. This morning at sunrise, we caught an enormous fishing net in the keel: we went from 11 knots to 3 knots in a split second. All hands on deck, nothing worked except lowering the spi and reverse. That thing was gigantic and our 2nd encounter of the bad kind with the garbage of the Pacific gyre. During the night, we stood on starboard of a cargo ship. To be clear, you are basically on a collision course with a 930 ft long monster and you ask him to change course. The guy on watch had quite an accent in English (yeah, me too) and we had no idea what we were saying to each other, until I screamed STARBOARD in Uzbekistan-ish, with a Filipino accent. That’s when the guy at the helm changed course: I probably thanked him in Ukrainian in a Thai accent. Although Friday the 13th scares the hell out of superstitious sailors, it turned out to be a good day: the sun showed-up for a while, we dried the boat and our clothes, we took showers, organized our stuff below and even repaired a few misshaps from the previous days.
Because... Since Tuesday, our electronics were acting up (or not acting at all). Our autopilot was mostly working as compass and we found a short in one of the electrical panels (NMEA 2000 for the pros). Once the problem was identified, McGyver took over: nail clippers and lots of electrical tape, blue wire with blue wire and green wire with green wire, and that did the trick! It only took 2 hours and a very large roll of tape. Girafon sprinted forward in complete autopilot mode! When our technical team sees that, we will hear about Mickey Mouse and the way he works. We also repaired 2 spinnakers and a few other things. We were so happy with our work that we opened a bottle of Saint-Estephe… also because it was Friday the 13th. Thank you Pitchoun Bakery & Café for the “biscottes”, and thank you Olivier for the sardines from Brittany: a perfect “aperitif”.Our main worry right now is we need to turn South if we want to reach Hawaii at some point in the near future, but there is still a huge bubble in our path. We don’t know yet how to tackle that problem, but we should figure it out soon. It’s time to get on that freeway to our destination: Mai-Tais! Right now, Matthieu is at the helm, screaming! The kid is going crazy because he is reaching 12 to 15 knots with the larger spinnaker. Our record so far has been 17.1. That’s it for today the 14th. Tomorrow I will be watching the World Cup Finals live on my iPad via Irridium Go. Hugs, Charly"

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