Needles

Just past bridge buoy. 3rd onthe water! Happy days...

Team ireland lined up 123 on the pin - get some of tha!

On starboard already and almost nlaying alderney so perhaps notas tactical as I made out. Better go Steer...

P

Onboard and ready to go. Here are some tactical thoughts pour la matin...I've just finished looking at the weather,tides and routing for tomorrow. It's interesting.

The wind is due to start sw'ly (230deg) and veer all day into the west(270) so that means on the wind most of the day. About 15kts+ all day. Bouncy! The tide will be running west to east until 3pm so we should be finishing on the next east-west phase - sometime between 5-8pm tomorrow evening. So what would you do!?
It will be upwind to the needles and then the BIG decision is when to tack onto starbord and head off accross the channel. My routing software says tack straight away, let yourself get pushed well east of the course and let the tide and shift take you back west in the afternoon. There is logic in this but it's risky and I also don't trust the computer for a lot of reasons! Thew reason it's risky is if the breeze doesn't shift we won't get back up to the course and more importantly if it dies and we don't get to Alderney before 7.30pm then the tide will have changed and you DO NOT want to be downtide anywhere near Alderney.
So the safe thing may be to put a bit of westing in on starboard after the needles while the tide is slack and then tack over. We shall see..

Of sourse, all this is theory and we'll have to see what it looks like in the morning. And of course what everyone else does..

I hope that all made sense to some of you! If anyone fancies running some routing overnight please tell me what to do in the morning!

On the housekeeping side - first dinner was prawn biryani. No beer, backstay and boat in general ready to go. The band up in the yacht haven sound like they've just finished the cheesiest set in the world so I can Sleep now...

It's all good clean single handed fun ;)

Paddy

A video:
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/video/?oid=111402018888927

Post 2 – Location – Bedroom in London

I’ve just finished packing. Almost lost my dongle (that is ok to say!), but then found it again. The Hydraulic Ram is sitting in George’s shed in Southampton ready for collection and re-rigging tomorrow evening – thanks George, his flatmate Claire and the Rig Shop!

One more day of work, then shopping, train, taxi, shed, train, taxi, boat, pub(maybe), boat and then start at 0700 on Saturday.

John Loden the owner of Psipsina has kindly lent me his boat for this week and been my 2 handed partner for the season. We’ve had an amazing year so far winning the Round Ireland Race and the RORC overall double handed series. So the pressure is on to keep the results coming. Thanks John – hope the holiday in France is going well!

33hrs…and no third.

Post one - location. At Desk in London

Ok, so I have a long to do list and on it was start a blog. Done.

I should be able to keep this up during the week using the dongle and laptop onboard...

Still to sort out at the moment are the backstay ram in the rigging shop, food!!, a fair bit of Nav prep and how to play music loud enough onboard. All that is not ideal really, particularly as I won't get to the boat until late friday evening!

Looking ahead the week looks like it won't throw anything nasty at us weatherwise - see www.ecmwf.int I'm feeling a little apprehensive, particularly about French tides, but quitely confident. 65hrs to go....I'm convincing myself I like my own company.