Proteus of London - ARC blog 07.12.12

Wednesday 5th December (part 2)Correction to the earlier comment on Tuesday 4th December; The whales were approximately 25 ft long, not 25m. Must be all the sun and excitement.....Sailed right into the centre of a huge storm, which besides shrivelling and shrinking the helmsmen, caused us to steer a lot further north than anticipated. Slow, uncomfortable progress made today.Thursday 6th DecemberAfter all the bad weather of yesterday we made the most of glorious sunshine and calm seas, enjoying swimming off the back deck (where we discovered that a boat that's travelling at 0.0 kts actually moves fairly quickly!!??), had two separate pods of dolphins swimming alongside us for quite a while and ended up with a spot of Oli boom dunking. A good day all round.. read more...

Proteus of London - Blog 5.12.12 - Sail repair day!

Spirits aboard Proteus are high as the log reads 1700nm, meaning that we are still averaging over 200nm a day which 8 days into a trip is very pleasing. The wind has been remarkably kind to us for the last couple of days, staying at the higher end of the forecast speeds and keeping us moving nicely. However we are due for head winds by early tomorrow morning, although forecast to be light and dying of to almost nothing this could come assomewhat of a shock after so many days of downwind sailing.Today is also the day we must fix the tear in the leech of the mainsail and get the batten back in, not easy considering the batten is about 20ft long and even with the sail down the pocket it must go in is about 9ft above the deck! Just to add to the challenge we can only access the batten. read more...

Proteus of London - ARC blog 05.12.12

Monday 3rd December (cont)As suggested in the last blog we did indeed go fishing. Tosh caught a perfect sizedDorado, which we had for lunch less than an hour after he caught it.Afternoon entertainment was provided by Oli having a haircut on the backdeck......Tuesday 4th DecemberWe were escorted by Whales (estimated size 25m). Unfortunately, they wereswimming just below the surface and moved too fast to get any decentpictures.Tosh caught another (slightly larger) Dorado but as dinner had already beenmade, that one went in the freezer.Wednesday 5th DecemberVery overcast today but the upside of that is we still have good winds,rather than the lull that was predicted. After eight days we've completedwell over 1700 miles. We can almost smell the rum...... read more...

Proteus of London - Proteus ARC blog 03.12.12

Monday 3rd DecemberSince our last log we have had a mixture of weather, none of which would usually be associated with an Atlantic crossing at this time of the year!There has been plenty of wind though and we have been double reefed for 48hrs or more! We have taken a more northern route than most yachts and seem to have had less sunshine as a consequence. Pah! We have managed to clock up just over thirteen hundred miles in the first six days. However, we expect our progress to be slower over the next few days when the wind drops.Wildlife sightings have been almost non-existent. Oli saw a pod of dolphins and Tosh sighted a whale. Apart from that, we've only seen a few birds and lots of flying fish (we've had two on the deck so far). We're being well catered for by Bryony who surpassed. read more...

Proteus of London - Day 3-Proteus making steady progress

Well the journey so far has certainly had its ups and downs. The chaos of nearly 200 boats trying to leave the marina in Las Palmas in one go was looking to much of a squeeze, especially with a metallic gold paint job to protect, so being British we did the British thing and had a cup of tea and let the chaos unfold! Eventually about half an hour after the start wecrossed the line with the weather looking fairly wet and gloomy we set about making up for lost time. By the time we rounded the bottom of Gran Canaria we were back where we would've hoped to be after some fairly exhilarating sailing at speeds in excess of 15kts at times.The first night was uncomfortable at best with winds gusting up to 40kts at times we were playing with reefs trying to get the boat balanced, on the upside we. read more...