Whenever a teenager responds to “where have you been?” with “oh, nowhere” he must have been my neighbor because I am now in the middle of no where. The dead center of zip, the capital of nada.
 
The pacific ocean is the largest open expanse on earth and we are now close to the middle of it at point Nemo, named after Jules Verne’s reclusive captain Nemo in “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea”. In front, Chile at 1.700 nautical miles east, behind, the Chatham islands at 2,200 miles. To the north lies Pitcairn islands at 1,600  to the south a icy headland of Antarctica at 1,300 miles. We are so far away from land right now that flight commander Dan Burbank and his five crew on the International Space Station are closer to solid ground right now that we are!
 
For all the talk of the Roaring Forties and Furious Fifties, we are currently tootling along at 8 knots in light breezes and sunshine and the remaining miles to Cape Horn are forecast to be reasonably pleasant. We are trying desperately not to be caught by a ridge of high pressure that has been chasing us otherwise we’ll grind to a halt.
 
The approach to the Bluqube scoring gate was another story entirely as Adrian and I were finally able to crack off from the tight angles we had been sailing and make tracks under spinnaker. As the wind built we shifted from the big “Citation” spinnaker to the smaller, tougher “Caravan” high wind spinnaker. Hunkered down in truck mode, it was fantastic to have Cessna back up to cruising speed if only for a few position reports. I saw that we would have a few more hours of favourable wind than Marco and Hugo on Financial Crisis, so with coffee in hand I pulled some long hours on the helm to help push home our advantage.
 
For that invested effort we have now got our interest back as they have now been caught by the chasing ridge and the elastic that connects us continues to stretch. If it continues to do so is now down to whether we can secure some solid wind and make tracks somewhere, from the capital of nowhere.