Wednesday 17 September 2008

K: The Brolga spreads her wings and flys!

Since yesterday's dawn kite-drop we have been fairly schooshling along on a tight reach towards the UK. Truly exhilarating sailing & fast enough to keep our escort of pesky dolphins interested. Yea ha! And yes, schooshling is a real word - it's the sound the sea makes as it slides past the boat hull when you're going really fast. Let's hope we can keep schooshling fast enough so that the high pressure system behind us doesn't catch-up too quickly and we can keep this wind for a bit longer.

A couple of milestones. Firstly, Happy Birthday Mare-Bare!! As expected, we haven't quite made landfall in time, but I hope the pressie from Cambridge Bay arrived. Will see you real soon now with bottle of red in hand, so keep that Aussie pub rock karaoke CD handy! (Ray may want to arrange a game of golf that day.)

Secondly, Lizzie's been whizzing frantically all day and both batteries are now back to 100% charge. Yay.

And finally, we're now starting to "climb" up the edge of the continental shelf out of the Atlantic Ocean and into the Celtic Sea. A week ago when we were getting hammered by those big low pressure systems, it felt like this day would never come! Depth under the keel is currently around 2.3 km. By this time tomorrow it should be 100-150 as we pass south of Ireland. I can smell the Guinness brewing from here...or is that just the collective fermenting of damp thermals & used socks?

Cheers!

K.

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