Oct10 4PM Antibes

            We’re finally off.  Last minute glitches on the fuel dock(while taking on 1400                 litres of diesel) required the Cloth goods fixer to finish repairing the spray                     hood.  He had missed an important bit when we had it resewn for the trip.                     Weather a bit cool and grey. Not much wind for the moment but anyway w’re             underway.

Oct 11 11:15 AM Gulf de Lyon

Motored the first 137 miles.  The dawn brought North wind and we’re reaching along happily at 8 plus knots.  Andrew the Opera singer  lasted about 5 hours before bowing to the tradition of new SPINDRIFT crew members i.e. being ill in the galley sink.  The tradition is being ill not necessarily in the galley sink which was a first.

Sotiris cooked up a Red Mullet feast and Andrew recovered enough to eat a bit.  We have given him some  pills and a new wrist gadget which massages and promises to end  sea sickness.  Well see.

Anyone still having trouble opening the itinerary attactment should try the following:

“The Excel viewer I used sucessfully is easy to downloaded free from the following link (or just search google for Excel Viewer and pick the Microsoft "Excel Viewer 2003")...” http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c8378bf4-996c-4569-b547-75edbd03aaf0&displaylang=en

I don’t know exactly how this works but Greg The source of the  above link also says:

I do not have your Iridium Number on this PC. If you let me (and others?)
have it I can then send you text message for free using Iridium.com web site
(top right on their home page).

            The Iridium number is: +8816 2144 0608

  Oct 11 4PM. 

            1^st 24 hour run is 197.7 Nautical miles.  We're vaguely level with                                     Barcelona.  Not a bad  Start