July 15, 2006 Latitude 24deg 19min, Longitude 150deg 43min Course 210deg magnetic, Speed 5 knots VALIS doesn’t have a “park” gear, but for most of today it felt like it. Yesterday’s winds continued through the night, and gradually lightened after sunrise. They finally dropped to less that five knots, with no discrenable direction. We spent […]

Good evening from VALIS, and a rather tired crew. Last night, due to strong winds (where did *they* come from?!?) we dropped the spinnaker and put up the white sails (Main and Genoa). We made fairly good time, but it was a challenge keeping them filled because of high swells and a poor wind direction. […]

(With Bob Hope and Bing Crosby) Actually, it’s still just the four of us onboard VALIS, but we are rolling along pretty well ourselves. Right now (July 13, 3:42PM PDT) we are at latitude 25deg 59min N, longitude 145deg 38min W. We are sailing 255deg true, at over 7 knots directly towards Oahu. Today we […]

Finally, some wind! We are sailing towards our destination with wind at 17 knots, and a boatspeed of 8 knots. This is a big improvement over the last couple of days. Our position as of 5:40 PM is 26deg 52 min N, 143deg 09min W. We have dropped one position in our race division, but […]

Attached is the google earth track file for the last 24 hours or so. I understand that some of the previous track files may be missing or incorrect — I will upload a corrected and combined trackfile when I get to Hawaii. Aloha, Paul valis-jul12.kmz

The last 24 hours has been frustrating, not that we’re complaining… Current position as of July 11, 2:58PM: Latitude 27deg 46min N, Longitude 140deg 50min W. Sailing at 5 knots, southwest towards Hawaii (you were expecting somewhere else?) During our 9:00AM rollcall, our reported position gave us a day’s run of 110 miles, our worst […]

Greetings from VALIS,sailing slowly towards Oahu. (My name is Paul Elliott, and I am writing this in third-person to gain much-needed objectivity.) Our position at 6:60 PDT is 28deg 243min N, 139deg 22min W We are sailing at about four (Ouch!) knots, pointing a little south of the Islands. We are trying to keep from […]

Here is our July 9-10 trackfile: valis-jul10.kmz

Here is a picture of Ville, steering by compass. When the spinnaker is up we have to steer very carefully to keep it flying. By the way, we have *no* idea who was steering at the time of the rip, so you should not infer anything from this photo (nor from this disclaimer). About our […]

Greetings from VALIS on the high seas! Our position at 2:37 PM PDT is: Latitude 29 deg 14 min North, Longitude 136 deg 19 min West. We are sailing towards Hawaii at about 8 knots in 13 knot winds. Today after the morning race position reports (a radio schedule where all vessels in the race […]