Rhumb - Log 1 - All good so far

Apologies for the radio silence, but it has been rather hairy out here and still is, although conditions expected to settle by Christmas eve!!!!! Very difficult sailing with winds touching 48 knots most of the time - a few lulls here and there, but no chance to get the spinnaker pole ready for poling out the genoa as yet.

Anyway, to the start. To a cacophony of sound - ships horns, hooters, yacht music and a brass band we slipped our lines and eased gently of the mooring at 12.15 with a cunning plan to beat the strong wind, learning from the skipper next door making a pig's ear of his departure. Crowds of onlookers lined the marina breakwater to cheer and bid us all farewell as we motored out to the start waiting area to meet winds of 30kn plus. Another cunning plan was put into action where we decided to hang back from the start line with the aim to get the shaft brake working - sadly, although cunning, it didn't do us any favours as the brake didn't work and we were across the line 10 mins after the start.

What followed was positive pandemonium as we broke free from the harbour breakwater and out into open sea. Winds now up to 45kn and big swells creeping on our aft quarters. George, our autopilot would have struggled, so John hand steered for the first 4 hours, with Tim taking her for the first part of the evening, then back to John once more when he came back on watch. We all suffered a few uncontrolled gybes, as the gybe preventer couldn't be deployed because of the conditions - perhaps we should have been better prepared. The early hours of Sunday morning saw a slight lull in the conditions, so thankfully, we were able to provide George with gainful employment.

Despite the tricky conditions, surprisingly there wasn't too much sickness, although Tim did struggle on the second day out - coming round now though.

We are now on day three and making steady progress southwesterly with a view to take a more westerly course later today. If the wind and sea state abates some, we will look to move into a more downwind set up. We are so looking forward to getting rid of the oilies. An update before we press the send button. We have now changed to a more westerly course and have picked up the tradewinds and Atlantic current, currently heading 225degrees.

An issue or two needed to be dealt with as the generator refused to start first time yesterday and today, however we think it's a dodgy switch which needs a bit of gentle TLC. The other issue is of much greater magnitude - crew decidely under-refreshed.

Rhumb over - position at time of writing N 24deg 13mins - W18deg 26mins