Musings from Philippe

Looking for more wind

Looking for more wind: everything seems a bit warmer and less windy. Squalls are already forming in the early afternoon.

Position is: 24 18 N, 139 38 W
TWD 050 @ 11, Swell 1 m from NW, Sky 75% cover, 1019mb

The Hawaiian Koa‘e

The Tropicbird, Hawaiian Koa‘e, just greeted us, 1000 miles off any land. This very elegant bird likes to come and hunt flying fish while staying in the air for weeks at a time. They’ll also dive for prey if they spot any. The genetic lineage of the Tropicbird is a bit of a mystery. A gorgeous site that had the whole team on watch in awe.

Philippe uses MotionX-GPS HD on the iPad and is sharing with you the following track:

Pegasus From the same mold , Fly Pegasus fly

We’re sailing to a tough handicap with a beautiful Santa Cruz 70 vintage design variation. So we need to be smart navigators. We are navigators. That’s what we do on the water, but that is very much our profession at Motionx-Fullpower. At MotionX we are leaders for In-Car navigation, Pedestrian navigation, Runner navigation and much more

That’s what we do. We are navigators building the best navigation tools.

We like to say that the vision for MotionX-Fullpower, our company, is to be the Navigators of the 21st century. To us it’s more inspiring than be the leaders for “display advertising” or some market-inflated “Formula” tied to a commercialism-hyped bubble. We craft what we have passion for. Real technology innovation .

Now on Transpac, we are sailing South while most of the fleet is still to the North. Let’s see how this all works out in a couple of days. We will sail more distance to go faster! If you play chess, it’s the equivalent of a gambit. Sacrifice some short term gains to invest in the long term future.

This race allows for some interesting tactical moves. We just made one. A bit of luck and it may all work out.

Fly Pegasus Fly!

The Key Tool

When we navigate we all have our preferences. After 13 Trans-Pacific races, 3 double-handed ones and records/victories in all the classics the tool that I would not go without for this race is a super accurate barometer. We at MotionX can’t wait for the first CE devices to have pressure sensors. There is so much we can do!

On Transpac, we’ve now developed the use of the Vaisala barometer. It’s so accurate that we absolutely sail by it. In this picture you can see that we’re running at 1021+, which would have been acceptable if the high had been like the forecasters had said: 1036+. Bu now that all the models show a slightly weaker high, we’re back at a sub-1020 target, which means South. This Vaisala unit sits right in front of our eyes. Analysis courtesy of MotionX predictive signal-processing. Enjoy. There is more to navigation than downloading weather charts and running routers. Thanks Goodness!

Philippe uses MotionX-GPS HD on the iPad and is sharing with you the following track: