Lilli Mae, On the way home - Leg 4 - The Big One - COMPLETE - 15 December 2019 1905 GMT
Lilli Mae
Linton
Mon 16 Dec 2019 21:17
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Hi Everyone,
We made it! We crossed the finishing line at 1505 local
time (1905 GMT). Needless to say we were delighted to have made it and quite
honestly all 3 of us were bursting with pride when we crossed the finishing
line. We will be buzzin' about this for a while!
But before we finished we had our "LAND AHOY" moment. We
had not talked about it but as soon as we started looking for the binoculars
everyone knew this would be a moment. Pete gifted to moment the Linton boys
and Mike was to shy to bellow even though we were only 3. So I bellowed it out
at the top of my voice. That was a moment! We had about 14 miles to run which
was a bit tricky. We had been sailing downwind for 2900 miles and the last bit
was on the beam and close reach.
We crossed the line in style! The photographer came out
to meet us crossing the line and so we have a lot of really great action
pictures of us crossing the finishing which we will share once we get
them.
There is not much time to celebrate before we had to
prepare the boat for landing. We had sat together and constructed an action list
of things that needed to be done on approach (to the finish line), things to be
done after crossing and before docking and then those tasks needed after we
landed. We read through and crossed off items as they were competed. Although
there was a lot to do we parked the boat with relatively little stress.
See you will see us enjoying the celebration rum punch
as we stepped off the boat; 3 weeks at sea and the rum punch was great. We left
Lilli Mae in a bit of a mess to get something to eat. The wind in the bay was
not easy and packing the sails was a bit troublesome particularly as some ropes
had got tangled up.
We were really tired last night and falling asleep at
dinner. Despite our attempts to eat and sleep well the adrenalin drained away
when we landed; last nights sleep was fantastic although some of us woke at the
times we should have been on watch or when weather report check-in was meant to
be done.
So we are now working to fix those "cuts and bruises"
Lilli Mae picked up along the way; the headsail is already off the boat and in
for repair, the rubbish has been taken away and whilst are relaxing we do have a
lot of work to prepare for the trip to St Kitts and British Virgin Islands.
We will send one more update for Leg 4 - The Big One and
include some of the pictures for the arrival; we have some great pictures. Leg 5
of Lilli Mae's journey home begins December 22. We haven't really thought of a
good name for the trip (Leg 5 of Lilli Mae's - On the way home) but we
will have a few punches and pina coladas and we are sure something will come to
mind
 . In the meantime we will meet up with
some boats we have come to know along the way and continue to wallow in the
pride in our work over the last 3 weeks.In the meantime take care wherever you are and we will
be in contact.
Crew aboard Lilli Mae.
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