I'm Here !!

Hi,

Very very quick update - I'll do a proper one with lots of pics and video in the New Year. We arrived in Antigua on Christmas morning. I happened to be on watch when the sun came up at about 6:00am and as the sky became slowly, slowly lighter we could just start to see the outline of land. We celebrated with cheese on toast, mince pies and tea. There were only 2 of us on watch when we sighted land so we gave the lads another hour in bed before getting them up with the news of landfall. Every one of them, to a man, lept out of their bunks rushed up on deck, saw the land and couldn't stop smiling for the next 2 hours. We got alongside in what is a very quaint harbour at around 10:00am, spent an hour "putting the boat to bed", and then walked all of 15 yards to a beach style bar. There was a champagne party on the dock organised by the locals at around midday and the atmosphere was incredible. I've got lots of pictures of a very happy crew, sitting together in the sun, on terra firma repeatedly talking about how good it felt to have arrived.

That was four days ago and since then we've been doing alot of chillin and partying. We're flying back to the UK tonight and we're all ready to go home now. In some ways it seems like a long time ago that we set off from Gibraltar but in other ways it seems like yesterday that I boarded the train at Victoria bound for Gatwick.

The passage from the Canaries took 17 days in all and I've loads to tell you but it will have to wait. We nearly decided to find a yacht that had been abandoned by a crew on the ARC race, we were going to claim salvage rights and sail it back to Antigua but in the end decided it would add too much time to our passage and there were too many unknowns about the yacht's sea worthiness, it's exact location and the whole business of salvage rights. We caught some Baracuda, we stopped the boat and swam in the middle of the Atlantic, we saw dolphins and whales and flying fish, we had some beautiful weather and some bad, we lost all communictions to the outside world for about 5 days because our satellite system stopped working (our other long range communications didn't work from the offset) and lots lots more.

Got to dash now. I've got my Yachtmaster exam the first week in January with three days at sea beforehand doing prep so I won't be able to do a proper update until the second week.

Happy New Year, hope you a good Christmas see you soon.

Land ahoy....briefly

Hi all. We´ve completed phase one of this trip by arriving in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. The passage was about 700 miles and we arrived yesterday, the 7th. So it took a little under 5 days. We didn´t have very favourable wind, which was either not strong enough to make good way or coming from the wrong direction. We´ll be hoping that isn´t the case on the next leg as we are aiming for an average speed of 8 knots to get us to Antigua by Christmas Day. We can, however, rely to a large extent on trade winds which blow from east to west and are consistently over 20 knots. It will take us about 4 days to get down to a line of latitude where we can expect to find these trade winds which is about 20 degrees North and then we´ll change our heading from approximately south west to due west.

The temperature here is about 26 degrees C when the sun is shining and it´s only going to get warmer as we approach the Tropics. The temperature at sea is getting to that perfect stage of not too warm and not too cold and even at night it´s warm enough to stay on deck for a 4 hour watch without getting all togged up in oilies, hats and gloves.

We only had one drama on the way down when the engine failed in the middle of the first night. We were delayed leaving Gibraltar and didn´t get away until about 8pm. The sails were all ready to be hoisted but the skipper decided that we would motor over night due to the wind coming straight towards us and there being alot of shipping in what is a very conjested strait. When the engine gave up the sea state was reasonably rough, made worse by a healthy Atlantic swell and although the sea was by no means monstrous it mean´t that when the engine stopped we were being thrown around a bit - imagine duck in bath. So, all hands on deck, we got the sails up and set about getting the engine sorted. The problem was air in the fuel system so it had to be bled which took a couple of hours.

Apart from that the sailing has been great, sometimes surreal, occassionally boring (mainly between about 1am and 4am) and the crew seems to be getting on well. We learned alot about our consumption of food, water and fuel and as a result we´ve designed various systems for the next leg. We only have enough fuel to about a third of the trip under power as well as charge all the electrical systems. We have needed to impose some conditions on water usage because if we keep using it at the rate we did from Gibraltar to here we will run dry within 12 days. Some of the food we bought in Gibraltar has lasted well but some started to go off almost immediately. This is only going to get worse the further south we go and, therefore, the warmer it gets.

I could go on for ages about various other facets of planning, and wax lyrical about being at sea in an ocean with no light pollution at night (so the stars are amazing) and the feeling of being 100´s of miles away from the nearest land, but as a "friend" recently told me by e-mail, I cured his insomnia with my description of astro navigation in my last update :)

So I´ll dash off now. Have a magnificent Christmas and if you find yourself in the London area over the New Year period, give me a shout. I´m looking forward to a good old fashioned knees up and 5 days off with Tricia (Trish to those that have been subject to the re-branding of a few years back).

Take care, lots of love

me

Slip the lines, stow the fenders away....

Hi, well we've all arrived safely in Gibraltar and today we're off. It's going to take about 4 days to get to the Canaries where we'll top up with water, fuel and perishable food. We're also going to stop for an evening so that we can re-charge our batteries with rest and recuperation or more likely, further deplete them with beer !! We've now decided that we won't be stopping in Cape Verde as we don't have time if we want to reach Antigua by Christmas. We have, however, bought some mince pies, decorations and secret santa presents in case we're still at sea. The weather here is about 20 degrees celsius and sunny. We've got an easterly wind which will take us out of the Straits of Gibraltar nicely and then as we track south we expect the wind to move round to the north so it should all be downwind sailing. There is a regional wind phenomenon here called a "Lavant" which blows through the Straits. The wind can reach 50 knots but it's very localised so if it does occur it should only be short lived.

We've spent the last two days preparing the boat which has been a lot of work, you would be surprised what needs doing to get the boat up to speed for a passage of this distance. Unlike coastal sailing, if something goes wrong or is missing, you can't simply nip into the nearest port and sort it out. I was tasked with victualling yesterday which takes a great deal of planning and buying. We've got 11 people on board and we expect to be at sea for 3 weeks. We've gone for the usual selection of dinners which include Spaghetti Bolognese, Chilli Con Carne, Chicken Curry and Tuna Pasta. We've got some fishing lines on board and we expect to catch some tuna. On previous trips crews have been known to catch six tuna or barracuda, each one big enough to feed the whole crew. We've also worked out a Watch System which consists of a 4 hours on, 8 hours off workload with a duty engineer, mother and cleaner.

I'm looking forward to cracking on with it now and have got the sort of nerves that you get when you are about to do a presentation to a big audience or before playing in a crunch football match. It's hard to know how the rest of the crew feel but I suspect much the same as me.

I hope all is good with you, take it easy land lovers :)