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.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Line Honors and Threading The Needles

Yesterday morning we finished our transatlantic race at the Lizard. Under a bright sunrise over the Lizard lighthouse and threatening clouds to the West we crossed just around 6am local time. Over 3200 miles sailed and I was pretty blown away by the gravity of it all. Hans had me at the wheel for the last 10 miles before the finish doing 10-11kts bearing down on the finish. I was definitely feeling the high. British Soldier and Carina who started on the line with us in Newport were only 5 miles behind us!  Simply amazing. Hans took the wheel at the last mile and I went forward to the bow (wanted to be first across the line, naturally). Lots of congratulations and a very nice Cuban cigar followed (thanks Uncle Mike!).

Little did I know what we had in store for us. Some of the worst weather we experienced was under motorsail in the  English channel -- horrible chop on our quarter, tons of rain and freezing cold breeze. Isnt it summer here in England???  At 5am local time I got up as we estimated that at that time we would be reaching the Needles at 6am (these are a chalkstone formation, tight channel, and lighthouse on the West end of the Isle of Wright). With a grey glow, and ripping tide with us we approached the Isle and slowly out of the fog I started to make out the red light and the chalk cliffs coming into focus. Very very eerie. We made it through ok and I brought us into Cowes where we have a pig roast and maybe a pint or two this afternoon. Great to be on dry land and am really looking forward to the last leg of the journey -- BA flight, Heathrow to Boston tomorrow night.

I hope you enjoyed these posts over the last few weeks and it gave some sense of what this journey was like for me. Thanks for following!

Cameron
Saturday, 16 July
11:39am GMT
Cowes, UK

3 comments:

  1. Congrats!!! Loved reading your journey!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Welcome to Europe! And thanks for blogging your way across. It was fun to follow your adventure.

    We'll see you all in a few weeks, back on the other side.

    Christian & co.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well done Cameron and the crew!!!!! Can't wait to see you this week!

    ReplyDelete