Itchycoo Park - Weve only gone and done it

So you sail 2117 miles, thrash your boat to bits and you cross the official finish line what happens? Precisely not a lot, but the very nice man on the ARC committee boat does ask you to go around again as the photographers had a busy night and isn’t quite there yet. So we put our first tack in 15 days in which completely took the crew bysurprise they hadn’t realised the sails could still move. So as we faffed about trying to remember which rope goes where when we saw what we thought was the photographer arriving but as it got closer we realised it was our own unofficial shore crew coming to greet us the party consisting of friends and wives on theirmission to deliver the chilled champagne and beers it was a very emotional and unexpected pleasure. There was a peculiar noise coming from. read more...

Itchycoo Park - Reflections of a Cabin Boy

Reflections of a Cabin Boy assigned to Roger the Captain (???)In late 2017 my long standing friend Roger announced that he had ‘acquired’ a boat and planned to fulfil a long standing desire to sail across the Atlantic and would I like to come. As a very novice sailor I took this as a tremendous honour which was only slightly dented when he also invited anyone he met in any bar he went to – which was not a small number.In the end I did make the final crew selection and, as you will know, the plan became to enter the Arc+ Sailing Rally from Las Palmas in the Grand Canaries to St Lucia via Cape Verde.We sailed around 1,800 miles from the UK to get the boat to the start point in Cape Verde and then rally itself involved 900 miles to Cape Verde and finally 2,080 miles to St Lucia - 4,980 in. read more...

Itchycoo Park - Blog - we are back!

Sorry folks about the lack of news for the last couple of days but here we are now. Its been an eventful couple of days and we have seen many sights sea, flying fish, sun and stars which funnily enough is what we saw for the first five days.  As we approach the half way mark we look forward to different sights of sea, flying fish sun and stars and we know the difference will be these are Caribbean laid back no problems man sea, flying fish, sun and stars so totally different. Dan has finally perfected the 24 hour siesta but the unfortunate side effect is he does have to ask every night at 7.00 “Is that the sun or moon?” – Well Dan “its still the moon like it was last night”. As we get through our fresh food The Vegetable Turners job is diminishing and is now replaced with trying to. read more...

Itchycoo Park - Atlantic update - Leg 2, Day 3

Last night our skipper was hit by a flying fish, he reacted with courage,dignity and masculinity.Early evening is a nice time to be on Deck, I had just finished clearingup after dinner and contemplating a sleep before starting my night watch.Skipper, who was on the helm at the time brought to our attention a flyingfish that had landed on the deck just outside the cockpit. With ourtorches we were able to take a close look at our visitor, marveling at thecolours and wing structure. With a flip and flap the fish was able to findhis way back to his watery home.At that moment there was a high pitched squeal from behind us, as thenoise reduced in pitch to a level within the human register we heard thecry "A fish, a flying fish, I have been hit with a flying fish, a flyingfish, a flying fish".. read more...

Itchycoo Park - Atlantic update - Leg 2, Day 2

Skipper's log (but not by the skipper)Day 2Position - 16:18.26N 28:35.59W2,030 miles to go129 miles travelled in 24 hrs6.8 knots per hourEstimated date of arrival - Dec 6thSailing update.As you can tell from the above numbers, our decision to head south to pickup stronger winds looks to have paid off. We have had to travel further inmiles but hopefully will claw this back over the coming days.The wind is a steady 20 to 25 knots but has reached 30 ! Our speed israrely below 7 and has reached over 9 - there's life in the old girl yet.The downside to all of this is that our comfort levels have plummeteddrastically and we spend most of out time at an angle of 30 degrees andbouncing off everything.Fishing updateAfter the modest catch yesterday - which was delicious - the lure wentback into. read more...