BLOG 1 24/11/2019
Are We Nearly There Yet?
Not quite, but not it looks like we will make 160 miles by the end of the first day.
Around 200 boats set off with a fine amount of horns blowing, and many people were out to wave off the fleet. It was a great atmosphere, and a fine, sunny day, with a slight breeze ensured we all set off without issue. We soon had the rest of the boats right where we wanted them – ten miles ahead of us. The tortoise always wins.
After attending Stokey Woodall’s entertaining lecture on astronomy, earlier in the week, we were well up to the task of identifying the celestial lights to guide us across the pond. I don’t have comprehensive notes, but here goes:
The first planet was easily recognised to be the sun; once that had set, stars polka-dotted the sky. The moon (the brightest planet in the sky) wanes from top to bottom, so the last quarter looked like the man on the moon was smiling at us. We saw two shooting-stars, which are like planets, but from another nebula. As our first night of hand-steering began, our path was guided by keeping Venus and Jupiter to star board.
If you want to play along with this at home, and you enjoyed the dinner on roller-skates game, you can create a similar scene in your car at night: turn the headlights off, navigate with your SatNav, looking only at the speedo, and the nodding dog for guidance (only joking; please don’t). Open the sunroof, if it’s raining.
Things seem to be going well. We have a handy, colour-coded chart on the wall, which tells us who is doing what, and when. The heads should be spotless by the time we get there, if bits of the Atlantic stop splashing through the window – maybe we should have closed that.
That’ll do.
Rupert