Saturday afternoon and finally we are just about ready for the race start tomorrow at 10 am.

We have spent the last few days at Mayflower Marina in Plymouth sorting out the last bits and pieces and meeting the other crews. We also have had a (successful) safety inspection by the Rally Portugal organisers (World Cruising).

There are 16 boats on this year's trip and the sizes range from 38ft to 54ft, with us midway at 46ft, however we appear to be the only 2 person crew with most boats taking 4 crew and some of the bigger boats swarming with hands! We had our first Rally ‘event’ last night and there is no doubt that the next three weeks are going to be great fun, but right now I think that we are all just a little apprehensive about the Biscay crossing. Once we have that behind us we can afford to relax a bit more. (Well a lot more in our case!)

The weather over the past few days has been very quiet and we may well have a bit of drifting match at the race start, but the weather files on the internet are showing some better winds coming in across the Atlantic around day 2 of the trip which should liven things up a bit.

Serafina is on the left

We will try to update this log each day of the crossing so that you can plot our progress at least on the Google Earth map, but if the weather plays up we might not bother with too many words!

Next stop  Bayona on the North West coast of Spain (Approx 570 miles).

Rob & Sarah Bell