Hello and welcome.

I have set up this blog for family and friends to keep track of my Transatlantic Race starting June 26th, 2011. I will try to update as frequently as I can. You can also track our progress through Yellowbrick Tracking -- see links below.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

The Flemish Cap

We are 186 nm South and West of the Flemish Cap headed in a Northerly direction after riding the Gulf Stream for the last week.  There is a natural high off of the Azores and we don´t want to be that South anyway, so it was time to Jibe and make a more direct course to England.  This mornings watch was pretty challenging.  Although it was only blowing 10kts, we had these huge rollers from our stern quarter constantly making the boat either round up or auto jibe.  TONS of input into the steering wheel, so my arms are pretty dead only after an hour of driving.  Nothing like the Beneteau or newer boats I have driven.  Then again, I have not driven a lot in 10-15 ft rollers...  To make matters more interesting, we are shrouded in fog and can only see about 30 yards past the boat.  Nothing on Radar or AIS (a systems that reaches farther than Radar, but only applies to ships that have an AIS system -- a lot of Transatlantic bound boats, most tankers and larger cargo boats do), but I hear we were close to Carina last night -- maybe even saw some lights.  They have their AIS turned off as did British Soldier -- obviously both literally trying to fly under the Radar or in this case AIS.  Not surprising the Brits are going commando being Military and all.

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