Well, that’s it. Lilli Mae is on dry land in Stratford, CT. She was lifted out yesterday (Thursday 9th June) at about 1600 local time (High water).

It was quite an operation to get her safely out of the water. Lilli Mae is the largest boat in the yard and it took a couple of lifts to ensure that nothing would snag. The last time Lilli Mae was out of the water was in April last year (in Palma, Majorca). Since then she has sailed over 6,700 nm; fortunately our inspection of the hull bottom has not identified any major issues. However there is still a long list of maintenance work that needs to be done.

Lilli Mae’s crew (Mike, Rick, Howard) are really “pumped" about our trip from Jamaica; overall we were at sea for 36 days which included a week in North Carolina waiting for the right weather. We really did “take it easy” on our way Long Island sound which was nice.

We (the Crew) have taken a couple of days to adjust to life on land. We are definitely still adjusting to the temperature and weather at this latitude. Notice we are now in much warmer clothes! 

Our overall journey from Montego Bay was 2,280 miles during which we have been fortunate to be able to visit some really cool places. We have had a blast! And we are convinced we have created an Oyster 56 sailing speed record. In our previous email we reported our max speed of 15 knots on the trip from Morehead City, NC. 

However our Navionics tracker that captures passage statistics on a continuous basis (rather than every 10 mins), recorded our max speed of 17.3 knots.

We are now starting the journey (flying) home to the UK so Mike, Rick and Howard are signing off Lilli Mae. We had our first night sleeping on land (in hotel rooms) last night for over a month. Mike headed out today (Friday 9th) and Howard will travel on Saturday (10th). Rick heads home early next week. We have talked again about our EPIC journey and we are sure we will be telling you more stories about this journey for a long while!

Lilli Mae’s crew communications will slow a little over the next couple of months. We will send a couple of updates on progress in Stratford, CT and report on our sailing activities late summer. However it will be late August or early September before you hear from the crew aboard Lilli Mae. All the passage plans are not completely finalised yet. We have however decided that Lilli Mae will sail back to Europe in April/May 24. We will keep you updated.

Thanks for engaging with Lilli Mae’s and her Crew's adventures. Your support and feedback has been much appreciated and this is what keeps us doing it!

We will be in contact.

Take care everyone.

The crew aboard Lilli Mae.