Freedom - The Epiblogue (21) Freedom Sunday 10th December 2023

Editor: CJGood Morning from the balcony of a beautiful waterside house adjacent to the Rodney Bay Marina St Lucia, kindly organised by my brother for our stay here.We crossed the finish line at 0450 UTC (UK time), 0050 local time on Saturday 9th December 2023. The final 48hours, from a sailing perspective, had probably been the most testing part of the trip. We were constantly hit by very heavy squalls and accompanying TORRENTIAL rain, which at one point was none stop for about 4 hours. Night was the most tricky, out of ‘nowhere’ (pitch black nights - you could see very little) dead running, goose winged, sailing by feel only and relying heavily on the instruments, we would be hit by squalls of up to 40knots (gale force 8/9)…..although lasting only 10 minutes before moderating to 20/30. read more...

Freedom - Blog 20 Friday 8th December 2023

Editor: Stu the Glue.Hello to you all from Freedom, approximately 90nm from the finish line in St Lucia. So that the skipper can do the “Final” Epiblog, I have been asked to put down some thoughts for you.I will start yesterday evening, it was a beautiful sunny evening, the 5 of us were sat in the cockpit just before dinner, spinnaker flying, 16knts of wind with Chris reading the daily blog reply’s and messages to us from his pull pit. I must say at this point, a huge thank you to all of you who have taken the time to send a message or reply to our daily blogs, it really has lifted our spirits and has become part of our daily routine listening to them being read out. Another superb evening meal was presented from the galley by Ian and we settled in for what we thought would be a nice. read more...

Freedom - Blog 19 Freedom Thursday 7th December 2023

Editor: Ian Whit - Day 19 Freedom Fighters Alive & Kicking Good morning from inside the cockpit where four of us are huddled escaping a torrential squall. Stu, bless him, is at the helm testing his wet weather gear. The start of his watch coincided with the tropical downpour. It’s a proper test for his Southern Ocean gear.Today is my sign off for the blog , so I’m going back in time to where it all started for me. September 2019, CJ and Jules have kindly invited Gill and I to share a barge holiday with them for a long weekend, this happened to be the wettest weekend of the year but rain never gets in the way of progress (not sure if Stu currently agrees with this). Anyway, whist the girls are working their way through copious quantities of Sauvignon Blanc at the bow, the. read more...

Freedom - Blog 17 Freedom Wednesday 6th December 2023.

Editor Nigel Greetings fighter followers. What a night that was !After a breezey day on Tuesday with big sea and Atlantic swell in full song, we contemplated dinner options. As the rocking and rolling was tantamount to Bill Haley on steroids, it was very quickly decided that simple was the order of the day. So freshly baked baguettes with hot dog sausages, fried onions mustard and ketchup was great fare. And if I’m being honest I had been looking forward to them ever since I found out that they were in the pantry shortly after leaving Gran Canaria. Some fresh fruit (the oranges are lasting well and are delicious) a cup of tea and a couple of squares of chocolate and we were all fed. I was on ‘dog watch’ tonight (3am to 5am) so after a quick brief from the skipper as to desired course. read more...

Freedom - Blog 17 Freedom Tuesday 5th December 2023

Gday Team Freedom from the Aussie Freedom FighterTuesday finds us literally rolling along the 14th parallel (the same latitude as StL) goosewinged in 20 knots of breeze with a following sea. 170 nm sailed in 24h to 1300 today. As we are into the 3rd week I thought I would take a step back and give my overall perspective of the passage to date. I have used the SWOT framework, that many of you will be familiar with, to structure my thoughts.STRENGTHS1 the Crew - The Freedom Fighters are the bedrock, or should I say the keel post, of the passage.Though I had no doubt that we would get on fine; before the trip I was interested to see how 5 blokes would combine within a 42ft space for 3 weeks. My reference point was a 5 week trip of 5 crew between Adelaide-Melbourne-Hobart (this leg was a. read more...