0830hrs 11 Aug 2005 UTC 51’01”N 009’06”W
We’ve turned for home – the numbers are decreasing in the header… We rounded the Fastnet at 0335 BST this morning – awesome experience – very dark night, lots of boats of all descriptions around and everything dominated by this huge light. It livee on a 30 metre tower on top of the rock and it flashes every 5 seconds. Not just any old flash – this one has attitude – it means to grab your attention. Range is 27 miles and it has (I think from memory), 4 lenses which therefore revolve once every 20 seconds. Underneath it, it feels like being under a massive spoked wheel with almost solid white spokes spearing off towards the horizon and rotating. Love to have seen it in daylight. The piccy is of one flash and I tried to get a bit of video but we were rather busy. More pics of other stuff, but we’re way out of range now.
There are still 18 boats behind us and we are hooning downwind averaging 6+ with the big purple and gold kite. There’s a boat called Alert, also 2 handed, on our starboard side and at least 4 others in sight. We’ve just been interrogated by the Irish Navy – very politely – and they wished us Godspeed. And, sadly, we were too late for Conor, who was waiting for us at the rock yesterday afternoon. Sorry mate – too many Irish parking lots out here.
Looks like we’ll miss the prizegiving on Friday – tomorrow but they promised us all another one on Saturday. Thanks for all your messages and good wishes. We’ll give it a shake.
The logs ramblings can be cryptic, so we have added: