We made it through the first day unscathed! 048 52.216N 004 19.138W

Island Wanderer
Peter and Avril Brookes
Sun 11 Jul 2010 10:07
27 hrs in and all going according to plan.... Well almost! Having left the solent in thick fog, it did at least have the decency to clear so we could see where we were going in the channel. It seems some cargo ship skippers failed to notice that the fog had lifted and they could look around them, or that they had a radar that saw through fog or even that someone was calling them directly on the radio. Luckily for us several pairs of eyes and loads of modern technology mean't we could safely avoid the give way ship that clearly thought he was bigger than us so therefore could go where he pleased...

Anyway enough about the ships - once through the busy shipping lanes we enjoyed David's Sausage casserole for a lovely tea watching the sun descend into the haze.

The winds have not been favourable - light during the day, then just when people wanted to get some sleep, they made up for it overnight kicking up a somewhat evil sea directly on the nose. The result has not been the progress we had planned - we were doing nicely averaging 7 knots for the first 12 hours, but the night shift was slow. Distance sailed so far: 184 nautical miles. Not to worry, we are currently running along the North West Brittany coast, about 10 miles north of L'Aberwrach, The sun is shining the breeze pretty much non existent again and we have just had some dolphins or porpoises - I have no idea what the difference is, swimming alongside.

We expect to be turning the corner into Biscay later this afternoon, Lets see whats in storefor us then.

Bye for now! Guest blogger Derek x