Idea of London - Suspended Animation. 29N 25W

Hello World,

Coming at you live and direct from 500 miles out in the ocean Rupert
Spiegelberg is our introductee of the day and he comes to us out NY, NY but
that is not his home. Rupert is from London and still calls London home.
He's made his way over to the US to help start up the US branch of the
company he works for developing apps and websites for all us techies. He's
here on IDEA to make a long standing dream come true. To participate in a
long ocean sail, and get away from it all. Have really enjoyed himself
yesterday he's happy to announce that his "Sea Legs". have finally arrived.
There was some sort of glitch in the delivery service, and I guess it took a
while for them to find him out here. He's now happily moving around the
boat getting ever more involved in the manuvers, and life on a sailboat.

Yesterdays beautiful morning continued into the afternoon and evening.
During the afternoon the crew were treated to the site of Dophine for the
first time on this trip. Photo's were taken, and we managed to break out
the fishing rod. No we didn't catch anything but we have time to perfect
our fish baiting technique, and will have stories of Sushi for you in short
order.

The beautiful sunshiny weather didn't live through the evening though. As
we sailed into the night the weather deteriorated as a line of squalls came
through. The the darkness was complete. Our entire world was reduced to
the boat. As far as our eyes were concerned there was an impenetrable wall
of blackness that started at the lifelines. The breeze built to about 30
knots and the seastate deteriorated. Driving IDEA through this mess was
quite the challenge. With no visual reference on the sea, with the breeze
shifting through 20 and 30 degrees it was a "Fly by the seat of your pants"
kind of night. There were eerie moments when the senses abandoned us and
despite the fact that the speedo was reading 18, 19, 20, and up to 24 knots
at times you really didn't have a sense of forward motion. We were in
suspended annimation.

After hours and hours of this the moon finally came up behind the clouds and
added just enough backlight to see the sea a little although there were very
bright daytime like moments when the lighting flashed. Most of it was well
off in the distance, but still intensly bright. On and on through the night
this went on and util mornings light brough relief with it.

Relief and a different kind of frustration. Light winds. In some ways
light wind is worse than the heavy breezes. In heavy air there's almost
always something you can do to cope. To keep the boat moving. Racing. No
so in the the light stuff. Every turn of the wheel must be gentle and soft.
Ever bob and weave of the boat over the waves ruins the flow of air over the
sails and IDEA had to wallow through this all morning.

Until. . . The afternoon brough a steady 16-20 knot breeze with it. Not
just any steady breeze though. This particular breeze has allowed us to,
for the first time this trip, point the boat at St. Lucia. We are averaging
about 11-12 knots directly at the island. We are white sail reaching again,
and hoping for enough of a shift to get the kite back up. But no complaints
we're headed home!

Actually there are a few complaints: Those of us who are bunking on the
high side seem to be having a little trouble sleeping for fear of falling
out.

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls we hope you are as well as we are.

TTFN - Ta Ta For Now
IDEA