July 16th, 11:39 pst

This morning we know that we paid a high price to get South. In fact the position reports seem to show that we are to the left of most of the fleet. To get there, we’ve lost a considerable amount of distance. Now we must make it up by sailing fast. The conditions are perfect, 18 knots of wind from 280 deg mag. We expect the wind to continue building to the mid twenties during the day.

We are not racing the fleet. We are chasing the double handed record.

So why is that different? Aren’t we trying to get to Honolulu as fast as we can anyway? Yes and no. When we compete with others, we are trying to maximize our chances to win. And, in doing so, we generally make conservative decisions that are not conducive to establishing records. To us, this means that if we were racing the fleet, we’d probably not be the furthest left boat: we’d be right in the middle of the pack. To establish a new record Richard and I need to go all out. We need to start collecting those 250 mile days or we’ll be so far behind that we won’t be able to make it up. And we can only rely on Richard and I, just the two of us on the mighty Pegasus. We’ve got wings!

This morning during position reports Richard took the helm and I caught him rocking to his Oakley Thumps in this picture. I hope they are waterproof! That’s a cool MP3 player and a great pair of glasses. We’ve got both iPods in watertight cases. We each get a personal soundtrack for a great adventure.