Getting ready to cross the Atlantic Ocean

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Hi everyone, sorry for the lack of blogs recently but we have been just a tad busy getting ready to cross the Atlantic. We have been in Las Palmas on the island of Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands for the past 12 days. There are 218 yachts and crew here and everyone has been running around like blue a#@^ed flies getting their boats ready to go. We leave here tomorrow at 1.00pm for the official start of the crossing. The "Canaries are sensational and I will post more about our time on the islands of Isle Grasciosa and Lanzarotte when we get across to St Lucia as well as the time we have been here in Las Palmas. There are 218 yachts taking part in the rally, some in the racing division and the rest of us in the cruising division. Two web sites you can track our progress on are www.worldcruising.com/arc and you go to the fleet viewer section and look for our boat Sunboy, Fleet No 136 as well as www.mailasail.com where you go to the web diary link. In that section you can look for our boat under the name sysunboy or you can go into the fleet section and look under atlantic rally for cruisers 2009. We hope we can post a few web diary entries to give you an update as to what life is like crossing an ocean. We wont have proper internet access until we get across, the only way we have of accessing the internet to send text emails is by using our sat phone as a dial up modem, which is of course painfully slow and very expensive but it is our main means of keeping our positions posted with rally control, something we have to do each day. So apologies in advance if you send us an email and we dont respond for a while. We dont know how long it will take us to get across, maybe somewhere between 17 to 25 days, depending on wind and weather of course. We cant have made our boat any safer than she is at the moment, we have had her professionally checked over and double checked again, upgraded halyards, sheets and equipment. Anyway, it is Sunday morning here and the rally starts in about 5 hours so had better go and have brekky and get ready. Take care and blog you later.
Alsy

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Comments

[Des Schuman]

best wishes
My best wishes for a save and enjoyable trip over the Altantic...this may not get to you if you have already left....Gramps

[Ian Nash]

Well Done
Just logged in and noticed that you have completed your crossing. Looking forward to hearing from you soon with all the tales from your voyage.