Well life is now officially hot and boring. Engine on powering west as we have no wind to speak of. Our hope is that we will get wind sometime tomorrow.  We believe we are in the best position for it, but only time will tell.

However, when we do get wind, we’re ready for it. The Dingy Boys fixed ‘Big Red” and she flies!!!!!


My heroes, 23 metres of stitching and tape and when the spinnaker tape ran out they stitched in ‘gaffa’ tape.

Life hasn’t been all ‘boring and hot’ yesterday we had a visit from about eight Risso Atlantic Dolphins, they are very large but have the cutest faces.



Charlie caught a sailfish, and not to be outdone Claire caught her own sailfish
   

And I cooked everyone breakfast.

Beans you’ll enjoy this.... Nothing changes even on her day off Claire has to clean up behind me. :-)

We have also hit a couple of major milestones in the last 24hrs.

At 1905 GMT yesterday we officially crossed the half way mark in our Atlantic crossing. 1,512nm we calculate that with our extreme southerly route our total journey will be 3,024nm. So we celebrated with some Champagne, Caviar, and Foie Gra. Not too shabby! The first alcohol to touch our lips for nine days. So as they say it’s all downhill from here.  It’s them “they” people creeping into my blog again! You’ve got to watch out for them.

Anyway the other milestone is a little more long term and needs a little revision.....

Some of you may remember getting an email from me back in February inviting you to get trained so that you might like to join me at various points in this little adventure. It went along these lines...........

“As I am sure you are aware ‘UHURU OF LYMINGTON’ is being delivered mid May then I am off, with anyone who wants to join me, on a long and exciting adventure that involves turning right out of Lymington and then turning right into Lymington again 5+ years later.

This will involve two trips across the Atlantic, the Caribbean, South America, The Falklands, Antarctica, Cape Horn, The Southern Oceans, The Pacific Ocean, Galapagos, the West Coast of America, Alaska, the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, Australia, Micronesia, Bali, Malaya, Thailand, India, The Indian Ocean, Madagascar, South Africa and home again. All in all about 58,000 miles. With the equator being approximately 22,000 miles round and the most direct route through the Panama Canal and Suez Canal being about 28,000 miles, our little trip can certainly be called “The Longest Way Round”. “.

Well at 0800 precisely this morning our log tripped to 5,800 nm, exactly one tenth of the way around our little adventure. See Beans it’s not so far, we’ve done a 1/10 of it already. Only another nine times so far to go. :-).

Please don’t anybody do the math and say “I don’t think your going to be back in 5 years”. I haven’t mentioned that bit yet.

Which does remind me of a story. Last week I was at the Oyster farewell party in Las Palmas talking to a lovely couple, Steven & Trisha, who own an Oyster 56 called Curious, which they have sailed together from the St Katherine's Dock launch in April all the way down to the ARC. They are doing the ARC with plans to winter in the Caribbean. In Barry Ashmore’s, director of Oyster Marine, good luck speech he made special mention of all those Oyster’s off on a circumnavigation, including UHURU. Well you can imagine the look on Trisha’s face when Curious was included in that list. Steven had forgotten to mention that bit!! How familiar does that sound Beans.... :-)

Well, Buzz, has just pulled in a 14lb Atlantic Mackerel, so it’s sushi for lunch I’d better go and see to it.

Love from all on the good ship UHURU

Steve

2nd December 2008


P.S. The caption competition..... Fantastic response, we will be sifting through them all over our VG&T’s tonight. I will publish a few ‘appropriate’ ones later. Oh and for all of Peters fans that keep asking about him, he’s busy reading on the foredeck in between his gruelling watch duties.


Steve Powell (Owner/Skipper)
UHURU of Lymington
steve {CHANGE TO AT} uhuru {DOT} mailasail {DOT} com
Mob: +44 7774 423 449
Boat Sat Phone: +870773150353

To track UHURU
go to http://www.marinetrack.com/

Log in using

User name: UHURUFriends
Password: 123456  (The world’s favourite password)

Then double click on the boat icon and it will take you to another map which shows you where we are. Usual zoom tools etc,. If you hold the cursor over the icon you will see boat speed and direction. If you want to see where we have been over the last few days go to the 'Tracker' tab and adjust the date range to how ever far back you want then refresh.

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