Spirit III - Portuguese Ice-creams

It is hard to believe that we have been on the way from Plymouth 3 weeks tomorrow!Time has flown by, sailing, socialising, checking out a variety of different Portuguese marinas and sampling as usual the ice-cream on offer in this part of the world!The sailing has relaxed somewhat with very variable wind but a much calmer sea state which has suited Spirit III well and we have been flying along at times. The wind has still had far too much South in it and therefore our sailing to windward habit (that happened all last year as well) seems to have continued!However, we have tried to sail as much as possible and it is great that it has been warm and sunny for most of it as well.We are hoping for 2 more great days sailing as we sail towards Lagos.The social side of the rally is fab both on. read more...

Spirit III - Finally out of Biscay

We are out of Biscay having felt that we have had a right couple of bashings!It was such a relief to round Finisterre yesterday afternoon and start heading South and hopefully into more favourable wind conditions!Finally today we have managed to catch up with the rally after a small detour to Viveiro and L'Coruna in northern Spain.Neither of which were our intended ports on setting out from Plymouth last Sunday.Our trip across Biscay has been frustrating at times and the wind has been on the nose all the way with some uncomfortable and large seas at times.This has made it all very hard work.We were lucky not to have sustained any damaged to the boat - just a sea cock left open which allowed a lot of sea water into the bilge and left a big clearing up job!We are now looking forward to. read more...

Spirit III - Day 3 - On the Breeze

Still on the Breeze...Since Plymouth we have tacked twice soon after Ushant, but otherwise we havebeen hard on the breeze on Starboard tack for most of the time. Havingdrifted a little further east than we would have liked yesterday, we haveovernight been working to get back some West ground while still making some south.All four of us have in one way or another suffered from the on-going motion, this morning however see's most of us starting to feel more with it and probably hence the reason for this blog update.Leaving Ushant yesterday a small bird, looked like a swallow(?!) spent a good few hours with us on deck... it had first of all managed to fly straight down the open companionway and took a lot of coaxing to remove!Last night after crossing into deep water, the phosphorescence. read more...

Spirit III - Day 0 ? Final preparations

The last few days have involved crossing off all the ‘operation critical’ jobs from the jobs list. It seems like we'’ve been going non-stop, making sure we have everything we need before we leave and doing the final bits of testing. We'’ve also been meeting the other boats on the Rally and exchanging tips and some friendly banter.Ali, our final crew member who is joining us for the Biscay crossing arrived on Thursday.Yesterday (Friday) we went out for a brief sail to practice sail handling with the four of us and to test our new Storm Jib which arrived on Thursday morning. Thanks go to Sanders Sails for making it at the last minute and having it ready before departure.This morning Keith went up the rig for the final time to check the shrouds whilst Alice headed off to the shops to do the. read more...