D Day
Stravaig
Mon 24 Nov 2008 21:14
to the boat to eventually unpack our belongings in readiness for the start
of the trip. No sign of an Oyster Service Team member on board - a first for
this week!! There was a carnival atmosphere around the port with two brass
bands, music and crowds of people gathering to wish boats farewell as they
slipped their lines. Tom ran us through the deck safety equipment for one
final time to an extremely melodic brass band - a first! We eventually
slipped our lines at around 11.30 and headed out to sea. We passed thousands
of onlookers who had gathered on the harbour walls to wave us all goodbye.
We were followed out by as number of tourist boats filled with spectators.
Music was blaring and foghorns were going off everywhere!! The atmosphere
was quite amazing! The start of the race was very impressive, with 200 or so
boats all vying to be at or close to the line when the start gun went off at
1pm. We're off! The wind was around 15 knots and coming from the North so we
were running with the wind behind us for the start of the race. Within an
hour and a half of the start we decided to hoist the gennaker - the big
coloured sail that sticks out of the front of the boat!! Our one is bright
red with a huge white 'S' for Stravaig on it. It was amazing when it
eventually appeared out of it's snuffer (technical terms for very large
sock!) and filled with wind - very impressive!! We very quickly settled into
our watch patterns of 3 hours on,6 hours off, but staggered so that each
person only has an hour and a half on watch with each another. The first
watch was Tom and Cameron. We saw our first sunset at around 6pm which was
again quite amazing. 15 or 16 more of these to come!!
