Well that’s it; we are off and running (well sailing). We have had our first night at sea and what a night! 45 knots of wind and 2-3 metre seas. Needless to say we were a little busy last night and we are all a bit “frayed around the edges” this morning.

We arrived in Las Palmas on the 7th November thinking that 2 weeks would be enough time to prepare. We were still fixing our gas cooker issues on the afternoon before departure! And this was just one of a list of things we had to fix that we had not anticipated. We got it done with help from lots of other boats in the ARC fleet and Joan. Thanks Joan.

We left our berth at about 1215 yesterday and managed to get the team photos done before slipping our lines.

Crew left to right Howard, Joan (shore skipper), Peter, Emily Andrew, Mike

Our start time was 1300 hrs local time. Our plan was to head SSE and then to gybe SW at around 27 deg N and 15 deg 15 min W. We crossed the line at 1310 on a broad reach on port tack our sails reefed to about 2/3rds of full size. As mentioned it was a windy night with big swells and despite this we made good progress. A coupe of us were sea sick and so we reefed the sails, planned and executed our gybe west in the dark. That was tough particularly given that we have 2 headsails on our forestay and because of the swell height. We were quite slow last night but we lived with it to get some sleep.

This morning we spent nearly 4 hours (until lunchtime) rigging our sails for the trip. The 2 headsails are working a treat! As we speak we are speeding along at 8 knots with the wind right on our back heading straight at the waypoint at the centre of the best Tradewinds and where we adjust course west to St Lucia.

Anyway that is enough for now. Got to sort our chilli and rice for crew dinner in a moment.

We are on our way to Mo’Bay. We will keep you updated on our progress.

All the best, Team Lilli Mae