Sea Legs, or lack of

Sorry for the lack of posts since wee left, but I've discovered that my sea
legs take about 3 days to kick in! That's 3 days of throwing up and
sleeping, not so nice! But, we've been making good progress, and should be
getting to the straights of Florida in 2 days.

Had some fun with ships towing long cables, melted wires in the engine room
and a dead tacktick instrument, but nothing that should slow us down.

You can also check out progress by looking at www.kemahportal.com, which has
a progress map and updates from the trip.

We're off!

Current position: 29 57.240 N, 095 03.48 W

Set sail from Kemah at 1240 today, with a goal of reaching Galveston before
the fuel dock closes at 1900. Currently motoring because, after a week of
great sailing weather, it's currently flat calm after thunder storms all
night!

All my stuff is packed and stowed, and my hire car is returned to the
dealer... bring on Florida!

14 hours to go

I've been doing last minute errands and jobs today, but looks like every thing's coming together. If all goes to plan tomorrow, we'll be leaving Kemah Marina at midday, sailing to Galveston to pick up Greg, then off into the Gulf of Mexico.

The forecast for Sunday/Monday is for a Northerly to come in, with 11 foot swell and 20-30 knot winds, so we should be in for some heavy weather, however if it comes the wind will be in the right direction to push us towards florida in extra quick time. Given it's going to be quite tight getting there in time, this is exactly what we need, and may mean we get an extra day for a stop over in Key West.

Fingers crossed my next post will be from the yacht while under sail!

So much to do!

We're setting sail on Saturday morning, and it's coming up fast! The boats looking good, and all of the outstanding issuse on the to do list should be done by tomorrow evening. I've spent the last few days sorting out the laptops for the yacht, (one primary plus one older one in case of problems) sorting out stuff on the boat, and getting my tourist shopping done! I even valet parked at the local Saks 5th Avenue store on Tuesday! I could get used to this, but the place is huge. I've done about 400 miles so far this week, mainly just going to and from the boat, but at least petrol is cheap - a full tank for only $50 (about £28)!

This afternoon I'm driving down to the boat and hopefully we're going to be able to take it for a test sail, then there's a party to attend this evening held by Shirley, who's one of the crew for the first leg, and an English ex-pat living in Houston. Tomorrow I've got to re-pack my bags for the sail and get everything stowed on board.

Posted from the yacht!

I've spent the afternoon on the yacht, the culmination of which is this post, via Iridium Satellite phone from the Nav station! It all works, and (from a geeky perspective at least) all looks really cool!
[Edited for spelling mistakes - I must remember to spell check before I send an email from the boat in future!]

Gadget Mecca

After the dismal failure of my Sat Nav yesterday I drove round to the local BestBuy store to look for a new one, and was impressed again at how big and cheap everything is! Picked up a TomTom for less than they are in the UK... US maps only but I can either take it back at the end of the week for a 15% restock fee, or buy the UK maps when I come home!

Once my TomTom augmented sense of direction was restored I drove down to the boat and met up with Terry and Andrew who had just changed the engine oil and fluids, (glad I missed that little chore!). Also met up with Gary who's been installing a lot of the Nav and electronics and worked out a couple of the bugs in the system. Still got a short snag list for stuff to be done, but nothing that can't be sorted before Friday.

Then we had to drive to the nearest Frys store to pick up a 50 foot VGA cable, so that Gary could run it from the Nav station to the cockpit tomorrow, and wow was Frys huge! Made best buy look like a corner store, and was at least as big as the Asda in Canterbury, (which is supposed to be the biggest in the UK). And full of every conceivable gadget and cable you could need!

After that we drove over to Shirley's, (an English ex-pat who lives over here, and will be crewing on the first leg) for a dinner of steaks and baked potatoes. Drove home after dinner and had an early night as I think the jet lag is catching up to me!

Not a good day for gadgets

Woke up early this morning, (5am Houston time, 11am UK time). Turned on my phone which promptly crashed, then on reboot wouldn't read the SD card. Bad news as this is also my SatNav, which needs the SD card to work. Can't get the thing to work, looks like the SD card slot has died, and apparently Orange insurance 'wil express ship me a new one as soon as I return to the UK'. So looks like I'm either going to have to resort to paper maps, (which I'm not confident I'd be able to follow given the distance between places and the strange American road signs round here) or buy a new SatNav. Looks like a trip to the local Frys electronic store.

Then to make matters worse, opened up my laptop to check email and discovered I've broken one of the hinges... guess I must have dropped it at some point on the trip. Still working, but doesn't look good. Fingers crossed it'll last until I get back to the UK!

First sail on Eclipse

Woke up surprisingly late on Sunday... about 9am Houston time (3pm UK time). I guess the long trip must have warn me out. Picked up some breakfast at a boardwalk cafe (croissant with cheese and bacon with New Orleans coffee) then checked out the boat in sunlight. It's looking really great, Greg's obviously done a lot of work, (or at least had a lot of work done!). A couple of minor issues to work through this week, but nothing major. Took it out for a sail, which was fantastic. Sunny, warm and a nice breeze. If the weather stays like this we should be able to make Florida in one tack! I'm tanning nicely already, but am going to have to pick up some factor 50 if I want to avoid sunburn.

Drove back to Greg's house after the sail. His place is huge! But at 3000 square foot is considered small in this area, and (given the exchange rates) is probably worth less than my house in Whitstable!

Houston, we have landed

Flight was good, smooth and rather boring. Watched 2 movies, (National Treasure: Book of Secrets - Awful film! No Country For Old Men - Not the best film to watch while on the way to Texas!), ate two meals (one half an hour after take off, one 7.5 hours later just before landing!), got hungry and eat lots of fun size chocolate bars and drank lots of tiny cans of coke and sprite, listened to IPOD and read magazines and books. At least the seat turned out to be good... lots of leg room. What a way to spend 9 hours!

On arrival walked for miles through air conditioned corridors to US customs where I queued for half an hour. The primary purpose of the queue seemed to be to make sure you watched the chirpy 'America is great' video on loop displayed above the customs booths at least twice. I imagine this is a terrorist prevention measure to make you feel guilty in case you'd been lying when you ticked the 'I am not a terrorist' box on the immigration form! No pat downs or rubber glove action at the customs post, just a full set of finger prints and a photo, then off to the baggage carousel for another 30 minute wait for my bags, which arrived intact (thank you terminal 4!).

Finally left the air port an hour after getting off the plane to a wall of heat - apparently it's 'cold' at the moment! Found out the hire cars were a 15 minute buss ride away, which is great if you have two fully loaded kit bags and maximum hand luggage! Then another half hour queue at the Avis desk to pick up my car. Annoyingly all the other rental desks were queueless, although I'll take that as a good sign. Available car not the Chevrolet Impala which I was expecting, but a white Hyundai Sonata. Avis rep shocked that I didn't want to upgrade my 'import' model for a US car for only $19 per day.

Found the car 10 minutes walk away next to a long line of rental Hummers, (no wonder the world is running out of oil!). Spent 10 minutes figuring out how to make the thing go (automatic) then got on the road and drove 45 minutes to a restaurant to meet Greg. Had a proper American steak, then drove 30 minutes to the boat and tried to sleep.

Departure from Whitstable: 0745 UK time (0145 Houston time), arrival at Kemar Marina: 2230 Houston time (0430 UK time). Very long day. First impressions of the US: It's big. Very big.

On the plane

Made it through customs, all bags in tact, with only a brief pat down from security guard! Hope the US end is that smooth. Bussed to the plane, and I'm now seated and read to go!

*Sent from my SPV M3100 Smartphone*

Leaving on a jet plane

24 hours to go and I'm all checked in. According to SeatGuru.com I've got a good seat, so hopefully my legs may actually fit! This time tomorrow, (if all goes to plan) I'll be in the air.

Packing hell

How to pack for 4 weeks away? As many of you know I'm a car boot packer... I can fill a car boot with 'stuff' for a weekend away, and I pretty much filled a car for Cowes week last year, so I'm finding it very difficult to get everything required in two bags of hold luggage and one carry on! Well, got to be done, so I'd better get back to it... less than 2 days before my flight leaves.

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.