last blog entry from the big brother / little brother yacht

In a surprise move, I have decided to jump ship in the Azores - so this
is my last blog for this little adventure.

Faial is an absolutely gorgeous island, and Horta a lovely town,
extremely friendly and laid back. Following our "showers" the other
night we went and found the famous Peter's Sports Bar and had a
fantastic dinner and some beers with one of the other OSTAR skippers,
Mike Collins. Peter's Sports Bar is directly underneath the Scrimshaw
Museum; it has a lot of scrimshaw on display but the most prominent
decorative feature there is the countless burgees from various yacht
clubs around the world that adorn every inch of wall and ceiling space!
Pity we didn't bring ours...

And then we came back to Dinah and slept... and slept... and slept! It
was so wonderful not to have to get up to do a watch. And totally
amazing to sleep in a bed that wasn't constantly doing its utmost to
pitch its occupant unceremoniously out onto the floor!!! And then we got
up in the morning and got to have a proper shower ... how cool is
that!!!

So back to my decision to leave the boys bring Dinah home double-handed
... mainly I guess because I'm a wimp! I miss my home, I miss going for
a run, I miss fresh vegetables!

The trip was an incredible experience, and one that I'll always treasure
in my memory... I have pushed myself well out of my comfort zone and not
only survived but in reality enjoyed the experience. I have a much
better understanding of why Barry is so passionate about the sea -
there's a real sense of "peace" when you're at the mercy of Mother
Nature.

I will miss the boys. I'll miss the sense of adventure. I'll miss the
amazing skies on night-watches and other moments of the most incredible
beauty. And I'll miss the opportunity to bring Dinah into Cork Harbour
in 10 days time - which I think will be hugely emotional, particularly
for Barry who is now almost into his 11th week of his adventures.

And so with that, I wish Dinah and her reduced crew a Bon Voyage! I'll
be eagerly awaiting you in Cobh!

Aileen's Adventure - Out.

shower (of sorts!) food and beer

Ashore at last!!!! Hurrah!!! 2200 miles (and then some!) and we are finally on dry land.

Sadly the showers at the marina were closed when we got here (they close at 7pm for future reference!). We were all so incredibly disappointed at having to live with ourselves for another 12 hours that we decided to shower with the hosepipe on the side of the marina. It was perfect!!! The best shower I've ever had in my life! Some of the locals seemed to find our behaviour a little odd, and one group asked us if we are Norwegian...!!!

We've also sourced beer, and are now off in search of food...

More tomorrow ... not sure what time we will be surfacing in the morning though!

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55 miles to go

First things first - Scrimshaw. Thanks to all of you for your answers. Turns out that it really is a word and Jim wasn't making it up after all.

Scrimshaw-n-1 the art or craft of fanciful designs on shells,whale's teeth, walrus tusks and the like, practised by sailors during long whaling or other voyages.In art form known as scrimshaw, a nineteenth century whaler has carved his memories on a horn cup{Macleans} 2 A shell ivory,or the like,so carved or ingraved. 3 such articles or products collectively-vt--to decorate or produce as scrimshaw.vi to do scrimshaw work.{American English; origin unknown]

Second things second - where on earth are we? 38 31.12N, 29 49.64W.

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55 miles to go .... Making about 7 knots at the moment. So we should be ashore by nightfall, eagerly seeking showers, a bar and a decent restaurant - in different order of priority depending on which one of us you ask! First though we will have to check in with Customs, so we are effectively grounded at the marina until that formality is complete. We understand from other Ostar skippers that this is quite efficient in the Azores. When you come into port you hoist a "Q" flag and the customs people come find you and take you through the paperwork. However, we will be arriving outside normal office hours so we might need to wait until tomorrow morning before we're cleared to explore.

On my morning watch I had visits from 2 separate groups of dolphins playing around the bow, as if to say "Come on little Dinah, this way, follow us ...".

Being volcanic islands the Azores are extremely tall so apparently you can see them from a very long way offshore. So all eyes are peeled now... a competition to see who will have the privilege of shouting "Land Ahoy!"

well - i guess i asked for it!

Having complained about light winds recently and saying how frustrating it would be if our approach to the Azores was incredibly slow - I seem to have conjured up significant wind to take us the last 150 miles or so. At the moment we've got about 28 knots, one reef in the main and we're flying along. I saw my top sailing speed ever - 15.7 knots surfing down the back of a wave, very cool!

Position is 38 4.2N, 31 58.7W.

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Hopefully another 24 hours will see us ashore and having showers!!!! Yippee!!!! I've heard the "nice hair" comment (accompanied by a cheeky smirk) one too many times now!!! Not to mention, day 16 without a proper shower or washing my hair is a serious personal record, and one that I never never ever ever intend to beat... it's really awful to be honest!

My ipod is on it's last legs. I guess the almost total submerging by a salty wave a few days ago didn't help it. Being the older sister of Barry and 15 years older than Andy, all my music is seriously uncool anyway - so I'm getting no sympathy from them.

More tomorrow when hopefully we will at least be in sight of land. Come on the Azores!

PS - I forgot to mention - if anyone reading yesterdays blog was wondering what a "scrimshaw" is - we don't know either! If anyone does know, please drop me a note!

Azores here we come!

Less than 300 miles to go now. We're at 38 20.82N, 35 15.85W and have a lovely 14 knots behind us so we're running along nicely at about 7 knots with just the miansail up. Dinah sails very nicely on this point of sail so it's all quite civilised!

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We've started to make lists of things that we need to get in the Azores - spare alternator belt and more chocolate being the top priorities!!!

Various people have been sending us info on Faial, where is the best food, the best beer, places to see etc... One of Barry's friends, Jim, sent us this gem that I thought I'd share with you. Hope it makes you laugh as much as it did us. Really looking forward to getting there now!

------------ The Azores are a group of half-volcanic, half-spinach-based islands in the middle of the Atlantic. In fact, the Azores are located EXACTLY 0.4792 of the way between Baltimore Maryland and Dino's chipper, Kinsale.

The Azores were initially colonised by a clan of Eskimos, fleeing Genghis Khan's little known invasion of the North Pole in the 1400s. These Eskimos soon intermarried with the native midgets.

Today, the Azores are renowned for their pottery depicting the space shuttle and for a type of flax woven from the threads of old bunting.

Local traditions include the ritual shaving of the heads of visitors to the islands. Guests are often given tracts of land on the remote, out-lying islets in return for telling the mayor who shot JR.

Horta's scrimshaw museum is highly recommended, for all keen lovers of scrimshaw and scrimshaw-related bric a brac.

Visitors are encouraged to draw primitive rock art paintings of their vessels at the marina but are warned that any phallic symbology is punishable by death. The victim is scrimshawed to death over a period of two days.

Mark Twain visited Horta at some point in the past on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem where he hoped to open a pet food franchise. ----------------------

so sloooowwwwwww

Unsurprisingly I guess, we lost our wind during the night. We've now been motor sailing for the whole day and progress is painfully slow. I'm not even going to tell you how many miles still to go as I don't want to think about it. Position is 38 13.6N, 37 13.07W.

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We're now thinking it'll be sometime Tuesday before we get ashore. The end point seems to be moving out at the same rate as we're approaching it!

Anyway - the main excitement of the day was in the morning as we motored along. Andy and I were driving Barry mad with our chorus of "are we there yet?!" and "can we do some sightseeing today please please please???!". And in the distance I spotted - a tuirtle!!! Hurray - a turtle, we've been looking for one of them to add to our collection of wildlife.

So Barry said - right, let's go sightseeing then!!! And we turned around to pursue this poor unsuspecting turtle. Andy and I scrambled madly for cameras and got a couple of good shots. You can see how amazingly blue the water is. He was quite a big beast, probably a couple of feet wide at least. As we circled around him he took a dive to get away from us, and we were quite surprised at how quickly he could move when motivated to do so. But he surfaced again fairly quickly and we circled him once more before leaving him wend his merry way to wherever he was headed.

We changed our watch hours last night by an hour, which meant I was on deck for the moon rise. It was absolutely stunning. Down to the last quarter or possibly the last eighth, and bright red as it rose. So red in fact that just as the tip came above the horizon, for a brief few moments I had a little internal panic thinking it was the port navigation light of a vessel that had crept up quite close to us!

We've spent the afternoon huddling in the shade of the mainsail trying to stay out of the sun. Down below it's been 33 degrees during the afternoon, the hottest yet - partly because of course we've had the engine running all day. So we welcome the cooler evening temperatures now, and look forward to some wind picking up in the next few hours. PLEASE!!!

torture on the high seas...

Remember my lovely "distance-to-go-meter" that I was waiting to kick in once we went below 999miles to Faial? Well ... I couldn't believe my eyes when I went on deck for my first watch this morning to find that it has been taped over with red electrical insulating tape!!! NOOOOOOO... how am I going to track our progress now???? It's torture!

It turns out that Andy taped it over, not as a joke which was my initial assumption, but because he finds it frustrating to watch it tick by so slowly and not really be able to influence it very much. Amazing how two people can love and hate the same thing! Still it's a good reminder that "it's about the journey, not the destination" and that we need to live in the present rather than be constantly focused on some future goal - so I am trying to learn these lessons from Andy's frustration.

We made great progress overnight, but our wind has dropped significantly this morning. We're back on our full mainsail (first time in days) at 38 25.67N 40 38.78W.

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We will be saying goodbye to the 40s this morning, and probably we will need to do some motoring in the afternoon to keep some kind of decent pace going. We have 560 miles to go`(she says, immediately ignoring her philosophical statements about the destination versus the journey!!!). I can see this on another instrument down below - but don't tell Andy!!!

We are now out of the gulf stream. The water temperature has dropped by about 3 degrees - it's still very warm (27 degrees) but over a comparitively short distance it's a significant drop. That has sadly put an end to our sailing jellyfish friends and the flying fish also have thinned out significantly (no midnight boarders last night).

A couple of people asked me what do we do "on watch" - and the simple answer is - "we watch".

First and foremost we watch what's happening in our immediate vicinity. - Are there any hazards in the water? Just now for example we have seen an oil drum thing float by, which would not be good to hit... a few days ago we saw a whole tree trunk in the water.... - Are there any other vessels nearby? These are rare (like one a day) at the moment, but as we approach the Azores the frequency will increase.

You're also watching the weather and how Dinah is handling it. - We currently have her set to sail at a certain angle to the wind (80 degrees at the moment). Every so often the wind will shift, and sailing at 80 degrees may no longer be taking you where you want to go ... so you might need to adjust your course, and/or how your sails are configured. - Also you need to keep track of the wind strength - in lighter winds you need more sail area to maximise your speed - but you need to be careful you don't get any surprise gusts that would be difficult for the autohelm to handle. - And you keep an eye on the cloud formations and how they are travelling. Is there any thunder/lightening in the area (in which case you'd pay more attention to your paper log just in case you lose your electronics). Might there be the possibility of stronger winds or wind shifts associated with clouds? And optimistically, might there be any possibility of some rain associated with the clouds to remove some of this accumulation of salt!

And then you're doing a combination of - thinking... very deep thoughts like how did I get here, where am I going, etc... Watch out world - this amount of space to think about things can't be good! - listening to music / audiobooks etc... - watching the local wildlife - trying to avoid the worst of the splashes - if there are more than one person on deck then chatting, singing etc.

So that's it really ...

going native...

I guess it had to happen sooner or later ... Day 12 of our little adventure and I've started to go native!

Last night we had a flying fish land ricochet off my head and land in the cockpit. Instead of a squeamish girly response along the lines of "euw ... get rid of him please!!!" I jumped up to rescue the little guy. Tried to catch him in one hand but he was way too slippery so picked him up with both hands, his little wings beating wildly against my palms, and threw him back into the sea. I hope he didn't die of shock. My hands smelled extremely "fishy" for ages afterwards ...

Then - as we were preparing to eat dinner - pasta and Marks&Spencer tinned extra meaty Bolognaise sauce - I remembered some fantastic looking parmesan that Marco had given us in Newport, which his mother had in turn brought from Italy before the start of the race. Oh excellent - real proper Italian parmesan with our pasta! Dug it out of the cave and sadly it was in a pretty bad state ... very green and quite stinky. We all reacted the same way - ooooohhh yuck, we can't possibly eat that!!! I was *so* disappointed. Then I thought - wait a minute, parmesan is such a hard cheese it might actually be ok in the middle. So to the disgust of the boys, I took out my knife (each crew member carries a torch and knife at all times), dug into the block of parmesan, - and salvaged a good portion of it by judicious surgery! I was so proud of myself. It was very tasty too (thank you Marco's Mum!). I would *never* have done that at home ... but needs must etc.!!!

I had another "so cool" moment yesterday. The sun was so hot I was sitting out on the rail, bikini and shorts, trailing my feet in the Atlantic waves thinking - wow, look at me, middle of the Atlantic etc.... And then suddenly a massive wave caught me by surprise and drenched me from head to toe, much to the amusement of my crewmates.

Now, while on the one hand, getting drenched in warm Atlantic waters sounds quite nice, the reality is that you end up covered in salt, and in this environment salt is your enemy. Which is a pity, as we are completely surrounded by the damned stuff. The thing is, it keeps everything damp. So if you get it on your clothes you pretty much can't wear them any more. And no matter how much you leave things in sun to dry, they simply never will. As soon as the temperatures cool, the salt will absorb moisture again.

So - as I was sitting there drenched in salt water, we started to debate the pros and cons of salt.

In the "pro salt" corner we had the following: - margaritas - fish & chips (fries) - salted roasted peanuts - salt crusted steaks

Nothing else. And since we don't have access to either margaritas, fish&chips or steaks at the moment we'd gladly trade our peanuts for the complete removal of salt from our environment at this point!!!

Current position is 38 33.07N, 43 17.35W.

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Still have one reef in the main, making about 7 knots to the Azores with 685 miles to go. We should be ashore on Monday. We've been in contact with another OSTAR skipper who is about 300 miles ahead of us and he's now only making 3 knots. How frustrating that will be if it happens to us!!! Keep blowing please wind!!!

milestones, personalities, and life on board

Hip hip hurray - we have broken that elusive "1000 miles to go" mark at last!!! And we've also broken out of the 50s into the 40s ... it's all happening now! Current position is 38 08.02N, 48 15.80W.

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Wind is about 16knots, we're making a steady 7 towards the Azores with 2 reefs in the main. 7 miles an hour isn't particularly fast really ... I could run faster, though admittedly not on water!

I am back in my personality comfort zone now that I have a dashboard I can watch regularly to see those miles decrease! I can tell already that we will now start to have inter-watch competitions to see who can do the best mileage in their 2 hour session...

I also was toying with the idea of putting together a template for "a day on the ocean wave" along the following lines (with yesterdays info):

- Dolphins. Check. 2 separate groups of green dolphins. The second bunch (in the evening) much more playful around our bow. Amongst their group they have an olympic class high jumper who to our complete astonishment jumped what must have been 10 feet out of the water!!! Completely crazy.

- Flying Fish. Check. No flying fish mortality overnight however.

- Giant Squid. Check 3 board in a daring midnight piracy attempt to take over the boat. However, my valiant defenders Barry and Andy managed to fight them off. Mortality - 1, returned to the sea alive with minor injuries and strict instructions not to attempt such a coup again - 2.

Sailing jellyfish. Check. Lots.

Container ship passing in the distance. Check. Quite far away though, probably about 10 miles, we didn't need to check her details or make contact with her.

Electrical Storm. Negative.

Rain. Negative (boo!!!!)

A couple of people asked me about the watch system, what do we do at night etc... so *I thought I'd give you a quick rundown of some of the basics.

Dinah is a Jeanneau One Design French built boat that has been significantly modified by Barry and his preparateur Bob for offshore single-handed sailing. This means that she has a lot of extra things that normal boats wouldn't have (particularly electronics) and she doesn't have a lot of things that normal boats would have (some of the "home comforts"). If you're interested in more info about her, and about all the modifications they have done, take a look at Barry's blog site www.dinah.sail.ie.

She has a bow cabin (up front in the pointy end!) which contains the sailing stuff that we're not using. Racing sails and fenders for example. In a race, Barry would be changing sails regularly throughout the day, trying to maximise his speed according to the variable wind conditions. We're just running under mainsail and our standard jib for this trip, as an extra mile or two an hour doesn't really impact us. Fenders we last used in the marina in NJ, and we will use them again in the Azores. We will be jumping for joy when we take them out!!!

In the middle/main saloon section she has 1 bunk on either side. (No table, which you would normally expect to find here.) A small galley area is on the port side, with a 2 ring gas (propane for those in the US) burner (one burner is not working!) and a sink (but no running water as we have no holding tank since the modifications to make it a racing boat). And the all important navigation table is on the starboard side. This is where all the electronics are, the computer, sat phone, vhf radio, gps system, log book etc. as well as the paper / laminated charts of where we are going and potential fallback ports in case we run into trouble.

At the stern is what I call "the cave". This is the area under the cockpit, at either side of and behind the engine block. Here we store our food, water, first aid kit, spare parts for pretty much everything on board, plus our bags of clothes. Salt gets literally everywhere on a trip like this, even inside zipped bags. So everything is double and triple wrapped. Food is all in tightly sealed tupperware containers. Clothes are in individual ziploc bags within larger bags (so if one item gets wet you don't lose your entire wardrobe). To get at any food you have to crawl around in the cave with your torch, unstacking and restacking boxes until you find what you want, and then reversing out again ... not very dignified!

Since the weather is quite stable at the moment we are running a 2hours on - 2 hours standby - 2 hours off watch system. This means there's always one person in the cockpit. If things are calm the other 2 can be sleeping, with one ready to spring into action if required. During the days however it's a bit too hot to be down below, so we tend to all be in the cockpit, listening to music, chatting and generally just whiling the time away. When Barry is racing obviously he has to be on watch all the time himself. Effectively this means, he gets very little sleep. Typically the resting time that worked best for him during OSTAR was 13 minutes. So whenever he thought things looked stable he would settle down for a nap, setting his alarm clock for 13 minutes. His alarm is appropriately called a "Screaming Meanie" designed so that no human being could possibly sleep through it. Then he would wake up, check everything, and hopefully settle down again.

When the weather has been rougher for us, we have done a 3hour overlapping watch system, where there are always 2 people on deck. This obviously means you get less sleep which personally I find very challenging.... in fact this whole disrupted sleep pattern is for me the most difficult part of the adventure.

Barry downloads localised wind reports regularly via our sat phone (Thank You Iridium for sponsoring this for us!). He then makes routing decisions based on these. Last week you'll recall we took a dive south to avoid some weather that he saw brewing when we were at 40 North ... we came some 150 miles further south than our original plan in order to avoid that. Well, though it was painful adding 150 miles to our trip, and into the wind as well - it turns out to have been an excellent decision. 2 other OSTAR skippers went much closer to that weather system than we did (possibly because Barry was concerned about Andy and I and he was playing it more safely than he might while sailing solo as the other 2 are) and we've had reports that they are now some 300 miles behind us having experienced very difficult conditions for a couple of days.

And finally - we are running the boat on Universal Time. (One hour behind British Summer time.) This is a bit strange as it's getting dark and bright at "unusual" times... Like the "dawn watch" starts at about 10am UTC! The reason we do this is because all the forecasts and charts tend to use UTC as their base, so it means we shouldn't make conversion mistakes when doing calculations.

So there you go. Hopefully that's enough detail! Now time for more sleep!

sailing jellyfish

Yesterday passed nicely, with no major events to speak of. A couple of green dolphins (honestly, I'm not making this up!), loads of flying fish (mortality count last night on deck was 4 including one that barely missed ending up in my bowl of chilli!!!), and we had one *giant* (3 inch I'd say!) squid on the deck this morning too!

But I've been holding out on telling you about another species, waiting for a day like today where there's not a whole lot happening. We've been seeing a lot of these really cool things which are jellyfish with sails. They're about 6 inches long and come in a variety of colours. You can have transparent with pink bottoms, black bottoms or blue bottoms, you can have fluorescent pink, or you can have white with black bottoms. They're very sweet and look like little boats kids would have in their bathtubs. For the first couple of days Andy was certain that we were pulling his leg about them - but that might be partly because we were trying to convince him they were red, white and blue for the 4th July! But now even Andy is a firm fan of these little creatures.

It seems that their mode of transport is to inflate a little sail and bob along on the surface until they reach wherever they want to go. Sadly they haven't quite mastered the art of sailing and tend to capsize very frequently.

Each evening we seem to have one container ship pass us reasonably closely. A few nights ago it was Gypsum Centennial which passed us about 0.3 miles away. That was a bit too close for comfort and actually was down to an error on my part where I mis-read the software and thought it was heading away from us!!! We bore away and crossed in front of it and then radioed them effectively to say "sorry about that, we're out of your way now Mr Big Ship"... the conversation went as follows - - standard radio protocol where you call their name 3 times and say yours 3 times - they acknowledge "yacht Dinah, this is Gypsum Centennial" - we say please switch to channel 10 - they ack "switching to 10" (and we all switch) - hello captain, this is yacht Dinah, we are a small sailing vessel off your starboard bow, just checking that you see us - and the response came "yes thank you Yacht Dinah, very nice, Gypsum Centennial out" !!!

Not exactly a great conversationalist our chap on Gypsum Centennial!

The next night we passed a couple of miles from "Cornelia" who kindly altered course to stay out of our way. After they passed us they pulled back to their original course, and then someone on deck flashed his very bright torch at us. One flash. We flashed back - one flash. He flashed 2 flashes. We flashed 2 flashes... Thankfully he left it at that or it could have been a long night :-)

So - for today, we have 15 knots on the beam. We still have 3 reefs in from yesterday but will shake one out shortly. Our position is 38 07.06N, 51 51.66W.

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All going well we should break the "1000 miles to go" milestone this evening. That will be cause for major celebration I think. We have one instrument in the cockpit which should show us distance to go, but its max reading is 999 - so it will be a major psychogical boost for us all when we can see the countdown start to happen in real time.

FLASH - Mother Nature challenges NYC!

Having seen the NYC 4th July fireworks last weekend, last night at dusk we were treated to the most amazing lightening display courtesy of mother nature! Over a period of some 2 hours we saw flashes, forks - vertical, horizontal and "curly wurly" (named in honour of Collette's fondness for retro sweets!) - some so bright they were literally blinding for a second or two.Quite àwe inspiring. Also a little scary.

During OSTAR someone sent Barry a message saying "Life's not about sitting inside waiting for the storm to pass, it's about going outside and dancing in the rain". What a great phrase I think!

And somewhat inspired by this, we eagerly awaited the downpour of rain that must surely accompany the electrical storm and its thick black clouds... we couldn't wait to feel freshwater on our skin and most importantly wash the infernal salt out of our hair. Andy had all his shower gear ready to go! Sadly however, the rain did not materialise ... so we're still salty sea dogs today.

Meanwhile, with this magnificent electrical storm going on ahead, we had fabulous phosphoresence in the water, and a stunning night sky in the clear patch of sky directly overhead ... such a feast of magnificence for us to look at, it was difficult to choose from moment to moment where to cast your gaze! (I have now realised that I will be an insufferable bore after this trip with my stories of "when I was in the middle of the Atlantic we saw ... etc....! I'll do my best to keep it to a minimum!)

Having made slow and painstaking progress through the 60s, we're now flying through the 50s. Position is 38 23.41N 54 53.6W, with 1229 miles to go to our waypoint just south of Faial in the Azores.

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We have strong wind (26 knots) on the beam, 3 reefs in the mainsail and are making about 8 knots. The sea state is quite lumpy, so it's reasonably tough going and extremely wet! Thankfully the water is still very warm (29 degrees) so when you get lashed by spray it's not *so* bad ... in cooler home waters it would be a completely different story. We were hoping that the wind would veer further and come behind us which would be a lot more comfortable, but the forecast doesn't look like that will happen in the next few days.

Thanks for all your emails! I have responded to many (please check your junk folder as they seem to be ending up in there sometimes) and I know I owe a few people responses which I will get to as soon as I can.

Welcome to the 50s!

Finally we have left the "sea-sick 60s" behind us and are firmly into the 50s - position is 38 01.79N 58 15.53W.

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We are now closest to our nearest satellite than we are to land. Our nearest landfall is Newfoundland, a few hundred miles away. The sea bed is some 4 miles below our feet! And we have 1390 miles to go to the Azores, making a good 6 knots at the moment..

Sailors are never happy! Just a few days ago I was complaining that it was too bumpy down below to be writing emails and blogs... and today it's too hot down below to be doing anything! The wind is at a lovely angle for us and we've been baking in the sunshine all day - so much so that the temperature inside is a fairly unbearable 31 degrees, and sadly no, Dinah does not have air conditioning. In fact she is sealed to be so completely watertight that we don't even have a hatch we can open to get a breeze blowing through.

We have half a loaf of bread left ... sadly the pitta breads did not survive the high temperatures and humidity and they had to go overboard to feed the fish. So it'll be a frenzy tomorrow morning to get to the bread for breakfast! We have some melba toast and cheese sticks though which will have to suffice for breakfast fare for the next few days.

The human mind is a wonderful thing really. Only a few days ago I was faced with my first 20 foot wall of water coming towards me, and my reaction was "oh holy crap" (that's the super duper polite version!!!). But Dinah rode over it as if it wasn't there, climbing steadly sideways and falling gently down the other side, sometimes changing direction slightly to ensure the easiest route. So my reaction to the next wall of water was more restrained - and now it seems perfectly normal to have these coming towards us, I don't even bat an eyelid.

A friend of mine emailed yesterday and said I was cool - and I responded that I didn't think so at all. On the contrary I had been a bit seasick, was grumpy that I desperately wanted a shower, and I wasn't eating properly. However, yesterday when the wind changed for us, we all had "huggie" showers, changed our clothes, ate a proper meal, and funnily enough the world seemed a lot different. And then this morning I finally had the "this is cool" moment I had been waiting for. I was on early watch, the sun was shining, the seas were lovely and rolly. Martin told me yesterday that his mobile home was rocking in the wind "like Dinah in a gale" and suddenly this morning it came to me that Dinah is like our little mobile home (albeit a little more mobile than most!) ... the guys were snoring down below, oilskins and boots were drying out on the rail, and I was on deck brushing my teeth amd watching over Dinah as we gently wend our way towards the Azores - and I was completely overcome with a feeling of "wow - now this is seriously cool!!!".

As it's so hot down below we've all been on deck all day, applying copious quantities of sunscreen, and with the famous Bose speakers belting out all sorts of music from our various ipods ... Johnny Cash, the soundtrack to Moulin Rouge, U2, Kings of Leon, Madeleine Peyroux ... I am still trying to convince them that you've got to have a bit of Brahms on a Sunday but I don't seem to be winning that battle!!! Maybe next week...

Time to retreat back to the lovely breeze!

night watch

So I'm on deck for my night watch, life jacket on, life line attached, looking around for something interesting ... and there's nothing ... exactly and approximately .... nothing! No moon, no stars, just darkness ... a faint horizon line in the distance ... but really nothing!

I turn my attention to my "Leaning Italian" audiobook, my chosen self-improvement item for the voyage. Possesive pronouns. It's my cat. Is it your dog? No, it's our dog. The cat is his. Are these your sheets? Huh? What on earth is the contextual link between cats, dogs and - sheets? I don't get it! I'm sure it must make sense from a linguistic point of view ... but it seems strange to me!

Next I wonder what I will write in my next blog - other than the wind is still on the nose, and looks like being there for another painful day or so before releasing off behind us. What else do I have to say? And then it comes to me. In the middle of this "nothingness" come sparks of blue-white light, literally washing down the deck towards me. I look over the side and see the most astonishing phosphoresence in our wake. Brighter than fireflies. Millions of little dots of brilliance sparkling in the water. Amazing.

We (the crew) don't appear to know for certain what causes this phenomenon - so hopefully one of you will be able to tell us from wikipedia!

friday i think

Good morning everyone

so here we are again - water water and more water!! We're heading a bit further south today and through tonight as there's some weather starting to pick up in this area that we would prefer to avoid it possible! The good news is that if we manage to avoid this impending blow we should finally have that long awaited starboard reach in the direction of the Azores.

Last night we had a flying fish on deck. Barry tells me he was pretty tricky to catch and get back in the water. There are lots of them around today - little flocks of them appear out of the waves and fly about 10 feet, very cool!

I've been meaning to chat to you about balloons .... you know those cute foil ones that are helium filled and say "happy birthday" and the like? The ones that we give to kids and they let go of them and the look very pretty as they float off into the sky,,, Well - guess where they all end up? The answer is "floating on the surface of the Atlantic", Honestly. We have seen hundreds of them. It's not funny... (especially when you alter course to avoid them in case they're a lobster por!).... Seriously - this is the start of my "ban the balloon" campaign ... I will never be buying them again!!!

39 34.22N 63 35.93W

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feeling better...

Just a quick note to let you all know that after about 12hours in bed (caringly tended to by Barry I am grateful to say) I got up and took my watch this afternoon. We're in 20 knots on the nose with 10ish feet waves, so it's kinda rough - certainly the roughest I've ever been in personally but needless to say Dinah is handling it like a pro and tossing us the odd playful shower of spray every now and then!

More when it calms!

40 19.8n 65 15.8w

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ugh

Wind on the nose, lumpy sea, not too happy about this today!!! Normal service will resume when the wind veers!

More drama on Day 3

So this morning, shortly after I wrote my morning blog, I am on watch, and Barry was with me for the first little while. We're sailing nicely along having recently switched off our engine so there should be no noise other than the sails, wind and waves. But there was this very loud airplane sound... We both were scanning the sky trying to see where this plane was, but couldn't see it at all, the sound died away, and we remarked to each other that this was very strange as it sounded quite close and the visibility was very good.

After a couple of minutes Barry went down below, and I continued to scan the horizon (this being your primary duty when you're on watch!)... and to my astonishment there was a huge creamy-white very unusual looking plane coming straight for us, no more than 20 feet above the surface of the water. And almost no sound... "BARRY BARRY QUICK LOOK..." ... caused Barry and Andy to leap like scalded cats onto deck thinking there was some incredibly serious problem - I pointed to the plane as it flew past us literally within 100 feet, and then we were hit with the sound-wall of the roar of it's engine as it flipped itself over and climbed vertically towards the heavens and then disappeared from sight, though we could still hear the engine roar. Quite incredible! The boys tell me it was an F18.

Later in the day a huge school of dolphins crossed our path fore and aft - there must have been 100 of them in all. 3 of them stayed with us for about 15 minutes jumping and diving around our bow. They're just breathtakingly beautiful to see in their live environment, flipping over to look you straight in the eye, white-as-snow bellies, and scar markings on their backs. It's also noticeable how clear the water is out here, you can see the dolphins when they're quite a ways underwater, maybe 10 feet or more. Really lovely! They move too fast to get a decent photo unfortunately ... so you'll have to make do with just my description! Not quite so dramatic as the plane - but noteworthy for other reasons! We're now at 40 08.7N 69 53.93W.

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Woo Hoo - We are moving again!

When I woke up for my morning watch I was quite demoralised to find that we still had no wind, and in the last 12 hours we've not travelled very far... day 3 and still 1900 miles to go to the Azores ... I watched the Queen Mary cruise by last night, brightly illuminated in the distance, and was envious of their engine power!

But having motored for a couple of hours now we have found some wind, and we're moving nicely at about 7 knots. Admittedly we are on port tack, so not quite the best direction for us - but at least we're moving! There's nothing that feels quite as bad as a boat sitting motionless in the water - especially a racing yacht like Dinah. She seems to come alive when she has wind. And that energy seems to be contagious as we all seem to have come alive too...

At the moment Andy and I are doing 3 hour watches, and Barry is "floating". This lets us get used to the boat and used to a dramatically altered sleeping pattern with the backup support of knowing that Barry is on hand if we have any concerns or want to validate any decisions. We had chocolate porridge for breakfast - one of the left-over items from one of the other OSTAR skippers who was shipping his boat home... if anyone offers you any, I'd pass on it if you have any viable alternatives!!!

Our position right now is 40 08.581N, 70 28.019W. Looking at the forecast we should have favourable winds until this evening at least, so the plan is to tack when we dip below 40N latitude. Starboard tack is more comfortable for sleeping but less comfortable for writing blogs and emails as you keep falling out of the seat at the chart table!

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Now to grab a couple of hours sleep before my next watch!

Drama on Day 1

Well - here we are at 40 12.52N, 71 27.01W, baking sunshine and no wind...
View Larger Map so I have a little time to catch you up with yesterdays drama.

Sailing along nicely in 20knots of breeze, making 9 or 10 knots towards the Azores... I'm on watch and I see this little boat waving at us ... I mean more than the normal salutation kind of wave ... more frantic waving really ... as we get closer it's clear that they are *really* trying to get our attention. I call Barry back on deck and as we come close to their boat they shout that they are out of gas (about 20 miles off shore!) and can we call the coastguard!

Which we did. PanPan, 5 people on board (including 1 child), inappropriately dressed, vessel name "Hooked", no gas, no medical emergency. After some discussion (where it appears the coast guard was assessing whether we would be able to tow the boat ashore ourselves, which wouldn't have been a great idea really) the coast guard asked us to tell them that they were dispatching a 41foot coast guard vessel to come to their aid, eta 1 hour, and to stand by until their arrival.

So we gybed around (Dinah to the rescue!!!), tracked back to them and hove to in their general area. (While hove-to I took the opportunity to prepare some pot noodles as it seemed the perfect opportunity to prepare food ...!!!). Tracking back wasn't the most comfortable for us as we had a full tank of water ballast on the starboard side and didn't have time to dump it in the effort to be quick...

I felt very sorry for the 5 people. They were clearly feeling the cold as they were all huddled up together out of the wind, and they must have been incredibly scared. We shouted at them to put on life jackets and I was pleased to see that at least they had them on board.

The Jones Beach coast guard arrived having been in regular radio contact with us, took the people on board, and towed the vessel away. They seemed very grateful for our assistance and told us if we needed any US coastguard assistance not to hesitate to contact them again on channel 16!

So we reckon we've stored up some serious karma for supporting the emergency services. Only fair winds coming our way now!!!

And speaking of fair winds, and the fact that I said we have no wind today ... we have been doing a little bit of motoring. But being a sailing yacht we are carrying enough diesel for only about 70 hours of motoring in total ... we would expect to be able to sail the vast majority of the distance. So hopefully as we get further clear of land the winds will pick up again.

Forecast is for another 24hours of light wind though...

Fireworks and Finally Underway!

Last night we took Dinah up the Hudson River to see the NY 4th July firework display (or "pyrotechnic extravaganza" which is a more appropirate description!). There were lots of boats on the water, of all shapes and sizes. Motor cruisers are far more common on these waters than sailing vessels, so when the fireworks finished we were rapidly left behind in very dirty water by hundreds of high powered gin-palaces! Then - in the middle of the mass exodus came a small yacht (maybe 20 feet) coming *the wrong way* ... being violently tossed around in the messy wakes of everyone else. They seemed to be enjoying the experience though!!!

This morning we evicted Bob and Louise, and made the boat ready for our trip. She is now unbelievablty tidy compared with 24hours ago!!! Jim and Tricia also came to see us off, ànd finally just around lunchtime Barry, Andy and I motored away from Liberty Landing and out past the statue of Liberty. Just under the Verrazano Narrows bridge we hoisted our sails and we've been making a nice steady 7 knots since then. The shores of NY and NJ are receding into the distance and we're on our way.

Position-wise we plan to stay around 40 degrees north and take the great circle route to the azores. At this kind of latitude we will pick up the gulf stream which will keep us in warm waters as well as speeding us on our way.

I'll report a position with every post so you can see where we are (you can plug the position into google earth for example). Right now we're at 40 29.61N 73 48.31W. As the days elapse you will see our longitude (the 73 degree reading) decrease as we make our way east.

Delighted to receive all your emails - keep them coming! Just try to remember - low bandwidth so plain text with no signatures pls!!!

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Happy 4th July!

We now have our full supply of food on board. Many thanks to Jim for taking me shopping and following behind me with a cart while I located tricky items like pitta bread and peanuts! Yesterday we also went to West Marine in Manhattan to buy the last few items for the boat (spare shackles etc...) and crew (knives and torches). And critically, Andy, our third crew member for the trip home arrived in the afternoon - so we're all set! We have almost everything on board (other than our water corral) but as you can see things aren't exactly ship shape yet - that's a task for tomorrow morning.

The fantastic news yesterday was that Barry has been awarded the Irish Sailor of the Month award for June! We celebrated with a couple of bottles of champagne when we met Lynd and Alan for dinner.

This aftternoon we went to visit the New York Yacht Club premises on W 44th Street ... quite amazing!!! They have models of all the America's Cup yachts in their appropriately named "model room" and it was fascinating to see the major design changes that have happened from event to event.

Tonight we will take Dinah out into the Hudson to see the 4th July fireworks. Apparently they're going to be bigger and better than ever before, including a new pyrotechnic called the "ghost" so we're looking forward to another unique experience. Security on the river is quite high, with several coast guard boats guarding the Statue of Liberty and fireworks barges.

Tomorrow morning we will stow and stack everything on the boat, and get going on our trip... I hope to write another blog entry before we leave. Meanwhile - Happy 4th July!

Weddings, Bites and Rope Tangling Pixies

I am imagining the excitement in the Dearani household this morning as Rachael prepares for her wedding later today! Knowing Rachael she has everything well under control. I hope you have a fantastic day and best wishes from the crew of Dinah to the happy couple!

This morning I can reveal further evidence of the famous rope tangling pixie which accompanied Barry across the Atlantic. The beautifully coiled lines in the picture belong to the boat next to us ... Ours were just like that last night - honestly!!! - and take a look at them this morning. What a disgrace! Pesky pixies...

In Newport some containers that we were "storing" temporarily on the marina dock gradually eased their way towards the edge and then swan-dived into the sea, never to be seen again. Learning a lesson from that experience, and inspired by the American wild west, we have set up the "OK Water Corral" - so that we can keep our water supply off the boat until we are almost ready to depart.

Many of you will be aware of my pathalogical hatred of mosquitos... poor Alan had to participate in a nightly "mosquito patrol" in Spain before I could relax in the apartment for the evening ... so you can imagine my dismay this morning when I woke up to spy a huge juicy mosquito resting just above my head. With lightening reflexes I squished him, only to confirm that he had indeed had a nice midnight feast at our expense...

Despite having sprayed myself with repellent last night I was certain that I was about to erupt in nasty itchy bites at any moment ... but so far it appears that Barry was his unwitting victim, with several nasty bites on his leg and one on his face! We'll all be using the repellent this evening I think.

Manhattans in Manhattan

Yesterday Barry and I went to Manhattan on the little ferry from Liberty Landing, and after the mandatory stop at Macy's we found ourselves drinking Manhattans in the 48th floor revolving lounge in the Marriott Marquis. Spectacular views of course, and quite interesting to see that there's quite a bit of new construction taking place in the city. When we got back to the boat we found Louise sound asleep on the beanbag in the cockpit ... it was too hot below deck for her. Unfortunately there was a really heavy rainshower in the middle of the night, causing her to beat a hasty retreat into the main saloon, along with the beanbag! Jim kindly dropped down the first batch of provisions this morning ... 200 litres of water apparently raised some eyebrows in the supermarket! Today is a day for chores ... laundry, taking an inventory of food already onboard and planning tomorrow mornings (final) grocery shopping etc. Barry has been looking at the weather for next week. So far it seems like we'll at least set out on Sunday with some nice wind behind us - but that might all change in the first 48 hours... Still - I've never been one to avoid a challenge, so que sera sera ... it'll all be good fodder for the memoirs!!!

New York, New York

An early rise this morning – and surprisingly not too much grumpiness... Manhasset at dawn / sunrise was truly spectacular. The water was like glass, and the fish seemed to be having a high jump contest ... hundreds of them constantly jumping and splashing! Motoring out of the harbour we passed Princess K (the second!), a gorgeous super-yacht which apparently is 41 meters long! Just slightly larger than us ... and maybe slightly more plush ...

There was no wind at that hour, so we motored under the Throgs Neck bridge. Saw lots of planes taking off from La Guardia on our port side, and immediately after the airport Riker Island Correctional Facility, which is absolutely enormous... They have a huge fleet of buses and some boats, all marked with the word “CORRECTION” on the side... and directly across the river is a prison boat, which presumably holds the overflow “clients”...!

On downriver between South Brother and North Brother islands – there’s a beautiful old ruin on the northern island, completely overgrown, with a huge tree growing through the middle of it, which apparently was an old quarantine hospital where Typhoid Mary stayed.

Just as we approached the final bridge before the infamous Hell Gate, who came and passed us on our starboard side other than Princess K! She was moving significantly faster than us, and presumably the owners had enjoyed a nice breakfast before leaving Manhasset to catch up. A lady was on the top deck in what appeared to be a cocktail dress!!! Very vulgar really - we wait until much later in the day to dress for dinner on Dinah ...

So finally through Hell Gate (with the tide running with us as per the navigation plan) and down the east side of Manhattan, under the Williamsburg, Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges. The Queen Mary is in harbour – we might ask her to give us a tow across that Atlantic on Sunday! And then of course the lovely Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island ... What a unique way to see NY City - it really was quite an experience!!!

We’re now in Liberty Landing marina where we’ll be based until Sunday. We plan to do some touristy things, but there is also some serious work to be done to ready the boat for another Atlantic crossing. Jim and Tricia have kindly already started work on the first provisioning list (the “heavy and non perishable” list...) for us, so we can start to stack the boat before the weekend. Will keep you posted on our preparations...