Raylah - Ripper sails South

When you go to sea there is your family at home who in a sense travel with you. They make allowances to let you go, they run everything in your absence and they follow your progress as you sail across the globe. I have one very special member of my family, my brother Simon AKA Ripper, who has travelled with me around the world all from his living room chair. If you had to put together all the ingredients of the perfect Shore Station then he would be it. He is highly intelligent and a natural lateral thinker who can apply his mind to solving any practical problem. His knowledge of electronics, engineering, plumbing and computer skills is unsurpassed, rebuilding a computer is child's play to him.I sat phone,email or text him from any part of the world asking for a weather forecast, how to. read more...

Raylah - JAWS

There is a tradition on crossing the pond of stopping the boat and everybody going for a mid Atlantic swim. Although I was not happy about it I let my crew do it on a previous crossing although I insisted on them being tied on. However I just received the following email from some friends of ours on another ARC+ yacht today:"Don't suppose you can pick up our blog on Mailasail but we did have a scarymoment. We have a Watt & Sea Hydrogenerator and it has a habit of slippingthe line that holds it down so it rises and thrashes away on the surface. Ithen have to descent the transom, step out and stand on the head with all myweight at sea level. Luckily Bob spotted it before I went down. A bloodygreat big shark (it was massive, I thought it was a whale at first) musthave thought it was. read more...

Raylah - LOG DAY 6 -Sea Sensitivities

We are 1208 miles from our destination, the nearest land is the Amazon Basin 1006 miles away. Our real and only world is the little moving circle which is as far as we can see around Raylah.  I think we avoid thinking about being in a little plastic boat in the middle of a large ocean .In our little world things change as the seas get bigger and confused or the wind goes down to a quiet zephyr or clouds cover the moon. Occasionally we have flying fish and tiny squids on the deck in the morning or sea birds endlessly circling, their wings skimming the water completely at home out in the ocean. Life goes on the same day after day in our little world and then suddenly in the middle of this vast ocean we have two visitors that find us.Nic spots it first on the AIS (Automatic. read more...

Raylah - LOG DAY 5-The Cape Verdes discovered

We came to Cape Verdes expecting no more than some barren islands with poor communities, a place to regroup, repair, refuel, refresh and restart. We leave with memories of a special place and a proud and welcoming people. Our first view of the archipelago was the majestic and precipitous cliffs of Sao Vicente, a wonder to behold even if a sailors nightmare as a lee shore. Our tourof the nearby Island of Santo Antao showed us mountain scenery that was stunning even to the most jaded traveller. It had the feeling of a lost world where the appearance of a dinosaur would not have been out of place. Towering pinnacle rockscovered in sub tropical vegetation contain narrow valleys and volcanic calderas often shrouded in cloud and mist where the islandersliving in isolated holdings and little. read more...

Raylah - Log Day 4-Land in sight

We are in good shape apart from instrument failures particularly the autohelm cutting in and out.We have been flying our lovely yellow and blue spinnaker downwind which gives us a very quiet and stable ride for cooking, reading and contemplation and a question that popped up was ‘Why do we go sailing?’ You take 4 blokes who hardly know each other, having nothing in common apart from sailing and you put them in a small room which like ‘Hotel California’ they can never leave.  Then you continually tilt the room in all directions to put them off there balance and occasionally wet them with sea water to make them cold and sticky . They can of course wash this off with more sea water making them even more sticky. You then address their mental state by sleep deprivation. This a. read more...