Departed 0900 from Falmouth on 05/08/10 after sorting out the generator (which suffered a fuel problem). We had a teriffic sail with south westerly winds at force 4, averaging 7.2 knots for 177 miles in the first 24 hours! Not bad for us and Charlie's first time on Maymio.   

Passed the shipping lanes off Brest at dawn on the 6th and followed a southerly course across the Bay of Biscay. Crossing the continental shelf at 1400 hours and sailing 144 miles in the second 24 hours with some changing winds and even a calm sea on Saturday morning. The winds suddenly picked up at lunchtime Saturday from the north east (force 4-5) and we noticed the tri- colour (the mast head navigation light) had snapped off and was left dangling until it crashed on the deck, waking me up! Yes, the watch system was working well with 2 on at night unless Charlie failed to wake up! Golden pillow award went to Jen still catching up on finishing work on the Wednesday, letting the house on Saturday, organised a party with Louise and a boat to prepare, not a bad effort.

Sunday morning the 8th August we saw land for the first time since the Lizard and the rest of the day was motor sailing with just the genoa in a following rough sea around the tip of Galicia arriving in La Coruna at 1600hrs. Went out for Tapas in the evening and couldn't quite believe we had arrived in Spain and the change in temperature without going on a plane.

Maymio has been great after a good test and some valuable practice for us, now a tidy up and off round Finisterre in the next two days if weather good as it suggests.

Techy highlights were the Hydrovane wind steering worked first time, with Charlie's recently acquired boffin status which Tony will appreciate because he helped us install it.

the generator worked for short bouts before over heating. The bread making was excellent and a real morale booster, the open CPN navigation software was successful and just as well because the chart plotter went down. Charlie says we will have the actual route plotted on google earth in a few days time.

Now up the mast to get the tri-colour!

Bye for now 

R,J and C