FROM 1-16. Lymington

Jul 29, 2005 - 1445hrs UTC │Lymington

1445hrs 29 Jul 2005 UTC Lymington

Well – the to-do list is did, done, dogsbodied. Woohoo! And we had the safety inspection today and no problems there. Somewhat less rigorous than the Sydney version – no counting safety pins in the first aid kit, for instance, and pretty straightforward. Berri is probably lighter that she’s ever been when we have raced her – Brian and David Cunneen might have had her stripped out a bit more when they were 2 handing in the ’80s but I doubt it. She echoes like a big cavern. Will be interesting to see whether we can feel and measure the difference in speed. She certainly should go faster than with 6 up in a Hobart.

Now we have to go sailing and try out the kite socks and work out how best to use them – whether, indeed, it might be as fast to use poled out headsails anyway above say 25 knots.

And I can, at last, sit down and try and write cards to people – if you don’t get one, my apologies. Brian and Jen, what’s your address?

If all goes well, this will come to you via sailmail and the sailmail station in Belgium. I sent a test to Steve a couple of days ago and this morning I spoke to Lyngby radio in Denmark on 8 megs so that bit works too. VHF still to be upgraded but not a showstopper. Sense of relief just creeping on – we ain’t through the finish line yet. The sailing instructions arrived yesterday too – some echoes of S2H and the Coroners recommendations but no radio skeds – there’s a schedule for watchkeeping on VHF. Lucky us get 0100 to 0300 and we have to report in a couple of places, such as rounding the Fastnet, if we can talk to anyone – mobile phone is ok and almost no-one has HF radio.

 

We have a berth in Cowes on Saturday 7th so we can get to the briefing at 1800 that day. Not easy for those not actually in Cowes.

 

I’ll do a couple more of these before we set off and I’ll try to send photos on the WAP toy from inside the race. If we’re not too busy. They’ll be teeny tiny ones tho.

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