Scarlet Oyster - Home straight!

Hi again,Seems like we are closing in on St Lucia as it is getting seriously warm!I am glad we found a more Northern route than some others as it would have been very sweaty this far South for too long!The cloud activity has kept us on our toes with frequent sail changes from Spinnaker to poled out jib through squalls to small reaching A sail and back to our workhorse large heavy symmetric which has powered us 90% of the time since we got in the trades.Whist the clouds have slowed us a bit, the guys tireless efforts with frequent sail changes and endless wooling of spinnakers has mitigated the damage done to our speed, whilst at all times keepingthe boat and seat within sensible limits!Our worst case scenarios for the cloud etc was worse than reality and we have been almost matching our. read more...

Scarlet Oyster - Ross Update

Hi All!,Lot been going on here, been some challenging sailing with some very unstable winds at times.we have had anything from 8kn to 40kn, in any direction from NNE to SE, the unstable nature of this wind makes sail selection a headache, we can only sensibly fly spinnakers upto 27kn, we have a hard limit onboard that as soon as we see 30kn, the spinnaker comes down, bravado of sailing in more with a spinnaker may seem to have rewards, but the potential risks become too great, also in 25kn plus we can sail with poled out jib and still make very acceptable speeds.The trick the wind seems to have is to peak at just over 30, so we drop the kite then within 1 or 2 mins drop to 20kn, we have to tie the spinnaker in bio degradable natural wool for each hoist to ensure no twists or other. read more...

Scarlet Oyster - Photos

Another great day onboard Scarlet Oyster!Great sailing in 10kn of wind, Ben bravely flew his drone again, and this time the camera was recording too;-)We have some stunning HD video, but sending 4GB video files are a bit beyond my sat comms budget so we will have to upload an edit when we get some more cost effective internet!The Iridium GO we have which is brilliant is on unlimited data but at under 1kb per second it would take till February at best to send, and we quite like using it for weather email and position updates!We will send some photos over the Fleet Broadband, I can afford to do this now as the GO is saving so many connections per day!Wind a bit tricky now, we are expecting the wind to back around towards the NE more so will gybe on the shift and start plugging West. read more...

Scarlet Oyster - Blog from Scarlet Vikings

In Las Palmas The Vikings from Denmark, Finland, Poland and The Netherlands invaded the good ship Scarlet Oyster, and persuaded the crew, with Julian White as their leader to be their prise.The owner of the ship, Ross Applebey, had to go to Las Palmas to solve the Viking problem. And before he could say 'Set Sails', he was part of the crew.Skipper Ross had to nail the start, in front of all the other and bigger boats, and to be honest, we were actually still in the lead (on racing handicap)after 5 days of fabulous sailing.The Vikings are having a ball, steering and handling the boat, and the fixed crew makes everybody happy with great healthy viking food and extraordinary good advice on how to control the ship.We have to admit, we now know that we have to improve our listening skills,. read more...

Scarlet Oyster - Scarlet Blog 1

Hi All,Thought it was about time we submitted a blog in case we still have anyone interested in our progress!The start just over 2 days ago was a great way to begin this adventure, the end of the line nearest the shore was advantaged by both distance and wind angle, and even more helpfully by an absence of other boats!I am pleased to report we crossed the tine 3 or 4 seconds after the gun at the pin with spinnaker set, we managed to lead on the water for some time before any of the faster racing boats passed us, so that was rather satisfying!We managed to stay on one gybe for the first 30hrs or so, and with our deep running mode still stay on the advantaged west side of the course.Any further west would be to risk the wind shadow of the islands.Our predicted route suggested going quite. read more...