Lat: 20:36.3 N : Long: 61:10.1 W.

6^th June, 2014 – Noon Position, North of Barbuda, North Atlantic. Heading for Turkey, via the Azores.

Dear All,

Well, we finally got underway and left the Cat Club Marina, Falmouth, Antigua, at 09:50 yesterday morning, June 5th.

"Sulana" now has a fine new forestay (one that fits!) and a new babystay, to replace the ageing damaged ones that had taken us safely all round the world, but finally come to the end of their safe working life.

We departed Antigua after a typical, off-season, local evening out, started off by Alan attending the Tot at the Antigua Yacht Club. The Wednesday night toast to "Ourselves, as noone else is liable to consider themselves with our welfare...." seemed most appropriate for a yacht crew about to follow in the sad wake of the crew of "Cheeki Rafiki"; a poignant moment's thought for our Skipper.

The remaining three of "Sulana's" crew arrived just in time to miss their tot, probably a wise tactical move on their part! However, they were not too late to get inveigled into joining a table team for AYC Quiz Night! Alan had already been persuaded to join in the fun by Diane and Richard Watson (of Oyster 485 - Sobriyah) to help form their team, together with AYC Commodore, John and his wife, Lindsay Duffy.

So, the eccentricities of local Quiz masters notwithstanding, a great final night was had by most, although not all, the noisy participants...We certainly enjoyed ourselves, the food, the craich and the beer.

Amazingly, thanks largely to Richard and Diane's unexpected depth of knowledge of "80's One Hit Wonders", John's specialist fount for quirkish Antiguan questions and a brilliant 'Perfect 10' for the Disrepectfools' team on "Famous Daves", we won the night by a single point from the previously unbeaten Canadians and got all our food and drinks paid for by the Club's Franchise holder. Thanks, Angie, for a brill. evening out, and an opportunity to say 'Goodbye' to you all, hopefully for not more than just another season!

Sailing out of Falmouth, to the friendly catcalls and whistles from the crew of "Stormvogel", that most famous of old, lightweight flyers, which was due to follow us out in a further day's time, we unfurled sails at the entrance and set off, reefed down, hard on the wind out to sea, heading South to start with, in order to get in just one tack to clear Green Island. We almost got it right, just having to pinch round the last few hundred metres, before getting into deep, safe water again. Did not quite allow enough for the cross current that seems to continually sweep into the coast round there.

Easing sheets round York Point we were soon out of the rough and choppy seas that are such a tradition outside English Harbour. They had already soaked both Nelius & Jason before we had been at sea an hour! However, then we found that beautiful, sweet spot in "Sulana's " sailing repertoir and, with reefed Genoa and Mainsail, but full Staysail, we quickly settled into a fast close reach, with a True Wind of 18-22 knots on the beam giving us a steady 9-9.5 knots speed through the water. This is translating itself, after effects of a cross current, into a regular, near 200 mile per day average speed over the ground, which will bring us to our Waypoint, approx. 300 miles to the East of Bermuda very quickly indeed, if this breeze holds steady for a couple more days.

At time of writing, 17:50 Local (UTC - 4), we have 662 miles to go to that dot on the chart.

Let's see if we can catch onto the tail of the S-Westerly stream up there that our weather guru, Chris has said we will probably just miss!

All for now.

Alan

xxx