Report to finish at 0443 hours and 47secs 12/06/08

I would like to say a great big thank you to everyone who has emailed and supported me on this trip. It has been a wonderful trip, hair raising at times, beautiful at others, and from your regular messages to me I new you were sharing it with me.  There was no way I could respond individually but I tried to include appropriate messages in the Blog.

The last run in (2 ½ days) was very fast in ever rising winds which gradually went from a dead, and often precarious run, on to a beat at Terceira which is why I could make no communications. Which reminds me, the wind strengths I have been quoting have all been under stated.  The wind speed I remembered as force 6 turns out to be force 7, when I looked them up here, and so on down the scale.  So I actually finished in a force 7 and the preceding days were 5 or 6 all the time.  I had to Anchor in the harbour under the lee wall till morning, going into the marina in the dark and with that wind strength would have been very dodgy.

In the morning I radioed to the marina and they said come in we will be waiting for you and sure enough there was a party of 4 or 5 people waiting to help me when I arrived. Everybody has been really super, particularly the marina staff.  As the boats continued to arrive the spirit and camaraderie has been fantastic with tales high seas and whales and daring do.  Every skipper who arrive has a constant grin on his face for at least 24 hours, after all most of us have never done it before and we are in very small boats for ocean crossing and when your close to the surface of the water as we are a 4 metre wave is pretty big.

At the time of writing (Sunday) there are 15 boats in and about another 15 still at sea.  You can keep up to date at the Jester web site www.jesterinfo.org .

Paul is going to sail back with me and we will continue the blog.  We will be setting off about the 1^st July so we’ll talk again then. In the mean time the marina provides free wifi communications so we can communicate any time.

Final numbers:       It took 11days 16 hours 43 minutes and 47seconds start to finish.

                            I did 90 miles in the last 16 3/4 hours

                            I sailed 1533.7 miles. (Trip)

                            The direct distance from Plymouth to Terceira is1195.38 miles (CMG)

Thanks again for your support,

Poppa/Dad/Roger

Ps, tell James I found a squid on the deck a couple of days ago, it wasn’t a giant but it did have big eyes.

Poppa