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Morning Haze - Morning Haze - resilience is the key...



When we prepared for ARC-USA (our last leg on our tour of the Atlantic and our 4th rally with the WCC), we set out goals for our family and ourselves individually. The general theme was to "live the moment" right from the preparation stage and stay with it until we land in Bermuda. We obviously also wanted to do well in our respective class even though we are a small family boat. As fellow cruisers know, we are not racing but it is hard to let someone go by without trimming your sails!

Sometimes when sailing offshore things don't necessarily go as you have planned. And for us this one leg seems to be one of those "unplanned journey". Just after the start (saturday) our refrigeration water cooling pump quit. That means no fridge and we have to cook everything now before we loose it all. Since this is not an essential system onboard, we pressed on. Then sunday just after 24 hours we suffered an Autopilot Failure...Diagnosis: a ruined drive unit! Now that one really caught out attention as we are only two adults onboard.

We were left with two choices...Go back to repair in Nanny Cay (24 hrs away) or continue toward Bermuda still some 660 miles ahead at the time. After a calm but lengthy crew discussion of the options available, looking at the weather prediction for the coming days and also the challenge of continuing on, the crew made a commitment. To sail this leg and make it the best we ever sailed while enjoying it as much as possible!

So here we are...some 350 miles south of Bermuda with Isabelle, Rebecca and I taking two hour shift at the helm. Demi is helping with cooking and all other chores normally associated with offshore passages. She will helm when the conditions subside. As you can understand, the key for us now is to rest as much as we can. So I guess we won't fish or write many emails while underway. ;-)

Cheers,

Morning Haze, stanby on 16





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