Leg 2, Day 5
16 December 2011
Amory Ross, MCM, PUMA
The waiting game continues for us and everyone else. It’s a strange life we live out here now, pushing the boat east before an eventual “green light” from Tom [Addis]. Any relative progress these days – forward or back – to the rest of the fleet is pretty negligible as we’re all in the same boat (not literally, of course) in that we can only go so far east before slowing and sliding back. The guys with the better scheds usually follow it up with the worst once they catch up. As futile as that seems, we’re being careful not to take the foot off the gas because:
- We want to be as close to the front as possible when it grants the mighty PUMA’s Mar Mostro passage, maybe sometime later [Friday].
- Nobody wants to start thinking that way, that we can ease up and not lose ground. That’s a virus we don’t want to tempt.
So we endure in vain, bugging the hell out of poor Tom. “What’s that cloud line mean?” “Is everyone else gaining on us?” “When are we going to be free of this?” He gets no reprieve from the persistent PUMA peanut gallery (Has an acronym been born? PPPG?).
We’ll get there, he says, but he won’t say when. So until then, the hard work must go on! Plenty more sail to changes to come, waves to suffer, gear to move, and coffee to craft. Oh yeah, the sea state is downright heinous. Latest vid here.
