02/06/2008

Hello,

I was quite overwhelmed by the wonderful support I had from you all.  I had a lump in my throat when I saw you waving from the spectator boat.  Sorry I couldn’t contact you earlier but my stomach wouldn’t let me!!

After the start the rain stopped and the wind went light, Dominique quickly caught me up in the light airs- his Mistral is 7.5m long and mine is 8.8m but I suspect his water line length is the same as mine so he is very quick in light airs.  My only chance of catching him is in a rough lumpy sea, so we’ll have to wait and see? (It’s not a race, of course!!!!)

In the light airs my wind vane steering was sticking and not working properly so I put the new electric autohelm I had bought on – I had done the set up on the way to the start, this and not being able to leave the dock till those around had left was why I was late arriving at the start – The new autohelm didn’t work either.

This gave me a problem, lost me a lot of time and meant I had to helm all night, no eats and no sleep.  I hove to a couple of times during the night to attend to personal things and pressed on  In the morning John Apps ( 440 days man!) called up on the radio and advised me to WD40 the wind vane all over and that worked a treat (thanks John if this ever gets back to you)

Sunday dawned a beautiful day and was fine till about 1600, when the weather picked up. Still feeling pretty awful, should have flown spinnaker yesterday but the body wasn’t up to it.  I’ll wind her up when the inner man is settled.

The position above is my position after 24 hours, i.e. 1400hrs and all positions posted will be at that time for the day of the report. Will try to do a report for each day even if it is only a position.

Trip says 108 miles run, chart shows only 100

You will gather I’m feeling much better as I am writing this, but the time of writing is Monday.  I’ll try to catch up!

Dad/ Roger