Ria - Tuesday 25th- First few days...

I can't believe we've been at sea for 51 hrs already...and at this rate we might be lucky to make it to St Lucia for Easter let alone Christmas!  We have had glorious weather and calm seas, but a distinct lack of decent wind which has meant we had to motor through a good proportion of last night- not a great start, however we are optimistic that as we continue to head south we will soon find a better breeze- in fact as I type I am being thrown off my chair as the wind picks up with a vengance.  At long last. Sunday was a great day; the excited, nervous tension in the marina was amazing and the start line even hairier than I think we had all been lead to believe.  However, luckily, within minutes of crossing the line and getting into some clear water we had the cruising shute up and were. read more...

Ria - Wednesday 26th- Still no fish...

I have this afternoon come to the conclusion that fishing is a rather boring sport- unless you are catching any fish.  This being the case, as I was sunbathing in the SHADE I decided to write a poem about our rather eventful day so far.  It is probably not particularly informative, and I am no literary genius, but it entertained me nonetheless and that is probably the important thing.  Here goes: My 4am start was too early,I clocked on as Roger clocked off.He recounted me tales of listening to whalesAnd as dawn broke the sky appeared pearly. On the horizon I spotted a light.Of the ship's direction I wasn't too sure,No starboard, no port light, they werent obeying the law,We kept clear but it gave us a fright. Whilst asleep Nick was thrown from his bunk,Hatch left open his bed was now. read more...

Ria - Saturday 22nd- Almost ready...

Having been nominated as chief chef, nurse, techie, green grocer and rationer I thought it would only be appropriate that I took the opportunity to test that the blog system was working while we are still on dry land. We have now been in Las Palmas for 10 days during which we have provisioned, prepared and partied hard.  It's been a long slog and everyone is exhausted but now terribly excited about our imminent departure tomorrow (though after a test sail yesterday when all of us felt decidedly queasy, even Daddy seemed to wonder what the hell we were doing!).  After the arrival of Nick Blandy at the beginning of last week, followed by Roger Hicks a few days later, the crew is now complete and it seems there is no escape!An anxious 24 hrs on Thursday conincided with Daddy's birthday,. read more...

Ria - Friday 25th- Fish at last...

Yesterday turned out to be yet another rather eventful day.  The weather was less great, with overcast skies all day.  At about 10am, we were all on deck when we heard another large clunk, and watched the spinnaker drift down and into the sea.  It took the four of us to grab it and hoist it on board, luckily unadamaged, to find that the halyard had chaffed through at the top.  Oh dear.  Another bad start to the day. I decided after this drama, that I would make some fresh bread for lunch, especially since it was a bit nippy so couldnt lie in the sun, however, when I opened the ciabatta mix, I found it was crawling with weavels.  I decided to put it in an airtight bag for use in emergency, and opened a new one.....but typically this, and the following 7 bags of the various types of bread. read more...

Ria - Sunday 30th- Some thoughts on the Noble Arts of Angling and Sailing, and on the combination of the twain.

Wecame across a mention in a book on Ocean Crossing (a subject upon which we areswotting madly as we go, hoping to discover what we are supposed to be doing outhere) that flying fish make excellent bait. Now that we are in the rightlatitude to collect several of these smelly little fellows in the scuppers everymorning, we thought that we should carry out some field research on the subjectand now have pleasure in reporting our findings Firstly, you need a flying fish of exactly the right dimensions. We havehad best results with fish of exactly 21.50 cms in length from the tip of thenose to the middle of the V of the tail. Any longer and they don?t fly well whendead, but any smaller and they catch only fish too small to make a good meal forthe crew. The second critical factor is the. read more...