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22/11/2008
Adastra of Yar - November 22nd, Adastra
.hmmessage P { margin:0px; padding:0px } body.hmmessage { font-size: 10pt; font-family:Verdana }Finally, after months of preparation and anticipation, we are at the off, at one o’clock on Sunday, and we start slowly inching our way across the pond. For those of you following on the ARC website you will see our daily endeavours as a small incremental creep across the map. I can assure you this seemingly small achievement will hide the daily toil that got us there and the massive enjoyment we will be having sailing on Adastra and settling into the routine of life on the seas. We have received lots of telephone calls from friends and family wishing us a good voyage. There are too many people to thank individually for the support that we have received in helping us prepare. It has been.
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25/11/2008
Adastra of Yar - Its not a Race! 23rd -25th
The final departure scene The causes of frenetic excitment build up before a big event are always wonderous and so in the case of a 'rally' of this magnitude. Vast numbers of boaties all doing their stuff to produce their best, from the ill prepared vessel to the best prepared boat that needs constantly checking so that no glaring error is missed. During this we have seen examples of every phase - guys dashing about clattering their way down their pontoons with armfuls of the lastest gear from Raymarine , who, I guess spent hours trying out how the 'boody thing' works! Then when time is up and all the boats around us are cleaned down, clothes still drying 'your man' next door climbs the mast to clean the upper most parts and in so doing covers the surrounding fraternity with his filth,.
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27/11/2008
Adastra of Yar - 26th - 27th
The night of 25th was another one of light winds so we motored for most of it however there were amazing shooting stars - presumably large lumps of space debris coming back to earth. Phosphorescence was good again but we couldn't compete with one boat who reported seeing dolphins in the night, glowing like missiles as they approached. Yesterday the wind was reluctant to get above 8 knots which made for slow progress but we finally lost sight of every other boat on the rally and had the ocean to ourselves until we passed a square rigger about 3 miles away. The weather forecast showed light winds to the west of us so we reached south overnight to avoid it and found steady breeze which allowed Adastra to stretch her legs. After breakfast we changed to twin headsails again and set a south.
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29/11/2008
Adastra of Yar - Tall stories 29th November
Adastra Blog 29.11.08 So what about the fishing/ Capt Bob suggested that fly fishing for brown trout for the last 60 years qualified Nick as the ?expert? ? what a joke. I did research and talk to people with experience of fishing off boats at these latitudes and had gathered some lures they thought might be suitable. Add to that Capt Bob?s treasure chest and I was quietly confident. I set the rod up and waited, two days to be honest, then bang, off screamed the reel with the brake set quite high. When I picked the rod up with difficulty it suddenly went dead, the wire trace cut in two. Lesson 1 ? there is big out there. L2 wire traces can be chewed through. L3 ? prepare a 115 lb trace with a smallish lure (two small purple squids) and 200 mts length of 100 lb line. I thought the hook I.
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