Good Morning,
London here we come!
I am writing this blog a little proactively as by breakfast time we should be in the rough stuff. It looks like a punchy 24 hour ahead and then things should settle down for us.
Race Start yesterday brought all kinds of excitement. The racing was incredibly tight in the gusty and shifty conditions. The windward leg was fairly straightforward as we had speed and manoeuvrability. Our game plan of staying out of trouble worked well as we headed off downwind exiting Loch Foyle. The crew work on Unicef was slick and the whole experience was very enjoyable. We have done about every evolution imaginable in the last six hours.
We are used to racing in the middle of oceans, without other boats and without the confines of a tidal river entrance. The whole thing was a great challenge and made for some interesting watching. The wind was so variable that boats had all kinds of sail combinations and courses within a mile of each other. We managed to avoid any drama and exit the Loch cleanly. Objective number one, successful! Now we are settling into hard upwind sailing towards the top of Scotland.
Thank you Derry~Londonderry for an amazing stopover and the warmest of welcomes. We are all incredibly grateful.
Here we go.
Ian and Dan.