The Plan

So, what's the point of this blog? For those of you who I haven't
bored with this already, I'm going on a trip from mid-April to
mid-May, crewing on the first two legs of the delivery of my friend
Greg's Bénéteau 42s7 'Eclipse'. The purpose of the delivery is to get
Greg's yacht from it's current berth in Clear Lake, near Houston,
Texas to the more convenient location of Cowes, England. Unfortunately
I can't get 2 months off work do sail the whole way, so I'm just
crewing on the first two legs. The yacht will be joining the ARC
Europe rally from Florida in a group of boats to make the journey
safer and easier to plan.

In more detail; I'm flying from Heathrow (not Terminal 5!) to Houston
on Saturday 19th April, staying in Houston close to the boat for a
week, getting acclimatised and doing some jobs on the yacht. We then
set sail on 25th April heading for St. Augustine, Florida which we
should reach by 4th May if the going is good.

We'll spend a couple of days in Florida where we'll meet up with the
rest of the ARC yachts, get a briefing and a safety check, then set
off on 8th May heading for Bermuda, which we should reach after about
10 days sailing. I get a couple of days R&R in Bermuda, then I've got
to come back to the real world (via Gatwick) while the yacht heads
across the Atlantic to the Azores, and then finally Cowes for the end
of June.

To view a map of the route go to:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=102985195416063873767.00044adbe0e79136b3ec4&ll=42.940339,-42.011719&spn=76.636635,129.023438&t=p&z=3

For the next six weeks I'll be posting to this blog regularly with
details of my trip, mainly to make everyone back home jealous! We've
got laptops and a Sat phone on board the yacht, and have to report our
position daily via email to the ARC organisers, so I'll even be able
to blog from the boat!

Any questions or comments, please fill in the comments box by each
post and they'll be emailed to me where ever I am, although for the
time I'm at sea, please keep them to a minimum as the Sat Phone
connection is only 9.6k, and I don't want to have to spend all day
below decks picking up my mail!

There should also be a web page where you'll be able to see our
progress on a map, so I'll post details of that as and when I get it.

Thanks for reading.