Hallelujah

That was the name of a boat in the last marina. When you looked at it, you would also say "Hallelujah" if you made it alive over a longer distance.

But "Hallelujah" is also waht my dad would say, and maybe is saying from heaven, when I told him, that today, march 11th 2013, at 1817 UTC, on position 39degrees 00,5minutes S and 074degrees 16,07 minutes W the counter on our log went from 9999,9 to 10000 nm. We started in June last year with 0000,0nm on the counter. So we travelled 18520km (about 11575 landmiles) since then adding to the about 2400nm of the trip from Turkey to the Gran Canaria. And at this historical moment Alita shows from her best side, racing the waves downwind with between 7,5 and 9,5knots, with just the genua out,at between 20 and 30knots wind from behind. Unfortunately the waves don't come straight from behind, they almost never do, so we get thrown around a bit and can't really sleep - but thanks to the lifting up center board (hochkippbares Schwert) we have a lot less of that efect than any kiel boat. By the way, for german speaking people: Marcus wrote a little appreciation about Alita, the things we love and the things which we do not like so much, in the last entry on the german blog. If I have time I'll translate it and post it on a separate page here in this blog. All the technical data about Alita can be found on the website. The bottom line is: we LOVE our Alita and would definitely buy the same boat again, especially for this tour.
Since we're travelling so fast at the moment we expect to arrive in Valparaíso either on the 13th at night or 14th early in the morning, so a day earlier than expected. Got work to do....After 10000nm Alita has really deserved the body massage (cleaning her body with high pressure water) and new paint we're going to give her as well as all the maintenance to make her fit for the next passage to New Zealand.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com