Hooray, we have our satellite data system working, well done to the team at Mailasail for activating the Inmarsat contract on Monday, we had a few hours of concern that the activation would not go smoothly, options to resolve probs a bit limited out here, so happy days when our K9 email system (running on a Samsung tablet) kicked in!! We've all (Aaron Ashton, Mark Solomon Christian McCullum and myself) settled into a comfortable routine, 3 hour watches through the night with one on deck and a buddy on-call below, and two six hour 2-man watches during the day. Winds have been nearly perfect, 12 - 18 knot breeze generally from behind us which has meant relative fast broad reaches although now the wind has come around and we're expecting it to lighten and start switching around over the next 24 - 48 hours. Seas have ranged from 1m (currently) to 3 - 4 metres but again, most have been travelling with us so we're all keeping relatively dry! We all have our sea-legs pretty
much, dinners have been pizza (day 1) and baked-beans with chorizo sausage (day 2) so we're not into gourmet territory yet, that'll come though :)
There are two Free Spirits on the ARC so we'll put 62 (our boat number) in the subject line so you can differentiate. We're in Div 1A, we're not IRC certified racers but we're trying to get there as fast as we can of course, wish us well!!
Cheers,
Alistair Jeffery