Skipper’s Report

26/12/16
1905z
Position 50º12.87N 002º24.28W
COG 225ºT
SOG 7.5kts
Weather NW 3-4, moderate sea state, 1048mb

The sound of water running past the hull, lines creaking on their winches, the murmuring of voices from the deck, smell of good food in the galley, and the weather coming through the VHF. This is backdrop to my little nav-station, tucked away on the starboard side of the companionway. It’s feeling like a pretty good place to be right now.

I think I was expecting the first 12 hours at sea to be slightly more chaotic than it has been. The departure I always expected to be challenging, as trying to make sudden step from life on land to life at sea is a big jump, and chaos normally reigns as all the last minute jobs try to get done at once, which was compounded by the passing of Christmas slightly disrupting the flow of preparations. However without too much delay, the galley was stowed, personal effects confined to cabins, and the last few ‘do we really need this on a boat’ items removed.

As we slipped gracefully out of our now homely berth at Lymington Marina, I promptly re-parked the boat in a much less graceful and unintentional fashion across the opposite line of berths. Nothing like messing it up with an audience… A calm bit of re-planning occurred, and we were off for the second time, on our way to America, first stop Canaries!

Main and staysail went up in a nice breeze, and we rode the tide out of the Needles Channel for the last time in what will be a good while. We then started making our way down and West across the English Channel, en route to the Bay of Biscay. The team have slipped straight into what life will be for the next few months, and adjusting impressively quickly, giving me the confidence to get catch a few hours sleep after a long Christmas day and night of prep with no time for bed. Once the tide turned and the wind started to drop we hoisted our medium size headsail (yankee 2), and are currently making satisfactory progress against the tide.

Discoverer is still doing what she does best, and being a boat. This does however come with the usual boat characteristic of there always being something up. Our brand new battery charger decided to pack which I noticed when the kettle stopped working up at 3am this morning, and our wind instruments also seem to have gone on strike. We’ll leave tackling these until tomorrow, and focus tonight on getting the boat and crew fully before jumping in with the full workload. Wind instruments are definitely a modern day luxury anyway…

I’m heading back on deck as we’re approaching the TSS off Casquets. Have a great evening, and hello from the happy crew of Discoverer, pleased to finally be underway!

•  •  •

Follow our progress across the Atlantic using our live tracker!