July 19th, 09:00 pst – lat 25 38 N, lon 128 46 W

All is well this morning on-board the good ship Pegasus. The night sky was incomparable. First, with the moon and Venus on our bow, then as they set in the West, Jupiter guided us for a while even matching that 15 degree right shift in the wind in her walk down to the West. Yes, in a period of an hour the wind shifted right 15 degrees. I used the opportunity to take some sextant sites (skip this part if you have no interest in sextants and celestial navigation). At 20:45 pst, the sextant showed me that Venus was at an altitude of 18 deg 30 minutes, azimuth of 270 degrees, Jupiter was at an altitude of 37 degrees 45 minutes and an azimuth of 152 degrees. With an assumed position for lat 26 n and lon 127 w, this tells us that we are 15.8 miles away on a line of position perpendicular to 153 degrees (as it relates to Jupiter) and 5.9 miles towards our point of assumed position on a line of position perpendicular to 270 degrees. That’s pretty reasonable accuracy given the fact that GPS was telling us that our exact position was 26 06.681 n, 127 09.086 w. (More on sextants if I have time later in this blog)

There were lots of little squalls last night with a boost of pressure and a left shift in front of them and a big right shift and no pressure behind them. We saw ten and only got caught up behind one. We did well.

We are more than happy with our position. We seem to have cut the corner and been able to fight ourselves into a chance at the record. Now we need some serious wind. We’re fast in the breeze!