8 Days to go!

Calypso's Web Diary
Joe Drury
Fri 27 May 2011 08:24
Hello All,
 
I'm writing this from the boat, she's been briefly lifted out of the water for a last hull inspection and scrub. Lots of little jobs still to be done, not least the victualling (food etc) and a thorough tidy out of the galley and stores lockers. Clothes need to be stowed aboard and shrinkwrapped, stuff like that.
 
The one thing which might cost me is the wind indicator seems to have broken. I'm going to have to sort that, if I was cruising I would just leave it, but on a race I want to have every possible advantage, and knowing the wind is quite important I suppose. I certainly use it a lot when I'm sailing. Wrote one word in the log today... Bugger.
 
The real reason for this shore-blog is to advise our blog fans that we have had a good idea: As you cannot leave comments on the blog, we ask you to email your comments to the ship's email address: calypso <at> mailasail <dot> com (replace the at's and dot's - fight spam) and we will publish the comments in the next blog. Just be aware that whatever you write will be published on a public forum, so careful with the email addresses and contact details as I have just done.
 
We will add a footer to every blog to remind you. This will be lovely for us alone at sea, comments are always good! Also, any personal emails to the boat would be gratefully recieved by the crew, there's nothing nicer for a lonely sailor to have some news from home.
 
We plan to blog twice a day, one in the morning, say, from 8-10am, and one in the evening, 8-10pm, the ship's clock is GMT. We will try our very best not to miss one, but if we just dash off a one-liner it means we are busy and will catch up later in the day. For the worriers out there, the satphone number is 00 8816 3157 4329. Something that came up from the last trip - we may not have all the systems switched on at all times, saving battery is an absolute priority, so the satphone may be sacrificed to keep things like the radar on, VHF on a listening watch and our lights shining for others to see. I'm sure you understand. If you don't get through, don't think the worst and try later!!
 
Right, that's all for now, only 8 days to go! I hope to see a lot of you at the start, it's 1300 local at Falmouth, views from Pendennis Point... I hope I don't cock it up!
 
Joe
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