Haircut day.

June 10
Not mine! The guys. I haven't completely lost it. King and Ed lined up this morning for haircuts and beard trimmings. What trusting souls. The good news is there are only 2 small mirrors on Ostinato and they aint too great. I sat out the stool on the sugar scoops, they wrapped themselves in the plastic cape and I buzzed away. Honestly, the two were a bit fussy. You would of thought they were going back to the RBYC for dinner the way they kept checking themselves in the head mirror and coming back asking for "just a bit more here".

In addition to haircuts, and in honor of Ivor's eminent arrival, we decided to use the clothes washer on board for the first time and take advantage of the sunshine. We seem to have reoccurring incidents of ocean slipping in through open port holes and depositing itself across crew bedding. Everyone starts out with 2 sets of clean linen. After that, your on your own. And yes....here is the place I am required to say "King what a great idea it was to put a washer on board!"

Claire and Bill departed this afternoon but not until the three of us hiked completely around St George. What were we thinking. We can officially say we have seen it all including the dairy and goat farms (beach front of course - those are some contented cows) 2 forts and several secluded beaches. Bill finally commandeered a bus and the driver took pity on us accepting the last 2 bus tickets for the 3 of us. Thanks guys! We really enjoyed your visit. See you in Ireland!

Royal Bermuda Yacht Club

June 9
Yesterday was sightseeing day. The group climbed on the bus and rode into Hamilton. King rates a city by the number of Marine stores it has. Hamilton has 3 so it was right up there. Of course, we had to visit them all. Ed and Cliff wisely pealed off from us early in the marine store quest. Claire and Bill stuck it out to the end. Exhausted, we arrived at the prearranged meeting point 1 1/2 hrs early. After lounging around the waterfront benches for awhile waiting for Ed and Cliff, I spotted the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club. We decided to be a bit bold and see if they would accept our ABYC membership. Bill and I ventured in. Claire and King had decided they didn't want to be embarrassed by us and stayed outside. 5 minutes later we were in the bar ordering drinks! Sweet reward.

We received the following note from a fellow SSCA member who was on the radio the night Herb told us the Coast Guard was searching for us.

"Kingsley just wanted to remind you to NOT have anyone on shore looking for daily /regular position reports from your SPOT device....as they will be disappointed (and could become concerned)

SPOT uses the Globalstar satellites and as such is limited to having only occassional / very sporadic coverage when further than a couple hundred miles offshore.....and NO coverage at all in the middle of the ocean)

This usually works out to be 15-20 mins of coverage during any one hour, max....and/or a few minutes of coverage every 15-20 minutes.....

The BEST that can written about this is on the SPOT website.... http://www.findmespot.com/en/index.php?cid=109 And, to say that they down-play things is an understatement..."

The same goes for the AIS system. It continues to work very well for us ship to ship but unless there is a transmitter available it will not show up on line. Sorry, wish we could do better.

On a more fun note, today was provisioning day. Instead of traveling by bus I received a generous offer of a ride from a lady we met last night setting at a near by table at dinner. Truly unbelievable. We continue to be blown away by the generosity of the people in Bermuda. To date, I have been shopping in the market in St George. Imagine trying to do your weekly shopping at the 7 Eleven....and then triple the price. Needless to say, I have kept the shopping to a minimum. But today! Oh my, I was in supermarket heaven! We are not talking Publix but maybe a small Winn Dixie. Prices on most items were about a 1/4 to a 1/3 higher. Some higher but considering everything is shipped in, not too bad. And, not only did my new friend take me to and from the grocery but she then insisted that she take Cliff to the airport. I have promised her to play it forward.

Company comes to visit !!!

June 7
The high winds and rain have stalled over Bermuda so it was clean-up fix-up day on Ostinato. First chore was to replenish the fuel and then we tied up to the quay in anticipation of the Harris' arrival and the goodies they are bringing......including home made chocolate cookies. While King took care of dealing with the Harbor Master, Ed, Cliff and I, with laundry bags thrown over our backs, weaved thru the hordes of tourists descending off the cruise ship making our way to the laundromat. 75 cents for 5 minutes of dry time. Yikes! $40 lighter and 2 hrs later we returned with clean, albeit
somewhat damp clothes and linen.

Kings eyes lit up when he saw the big red suitcase Bill was dragging down the street. For Me?! It was Christmas in Bermuda. All the "stuff" We didn't know we needed but really have to have was delivered by Claire and Bill. Thank you to everyone that contributed in this project! No mean feat to pull everything together in such a short time! Claire is our new heroine. Lights, wires, metal pieces of all shapes and, of course, the chocolate chip cookies from Barbara for her dad. Helen sent a surprise fruit cake to Ed who was generous enough to share it with all. Thank you Helen. For me, I raided the house one more time for 2 more sets of pillow cases AND, most important, my tiny magnifying mirror so I can tweeze my eyebrows. What can i say. It's a girl thing. Thank you Martha and Scott for being so accommodating.

By the way, I would be remiss if I didn't mention dinner tonight. Ed was the chef. He cooked squid and fried rice that was to die for! Of course this bought up the question of how many fish we had caught so far. The answer is none, nada, 0..... That would be zip. Bill thought the picture below explained the problem and made me promise to include it.

Searching for wifi

June 5
The crew is spending the day cleaning, rearranging, stowing and connecting lights that have never been connected .....we now have lights on the back porch and on the sugar scoops!! Really cool.

We are dealing with sad news today. King's brother, Cliff, advised us this morning that he had made the decision not to continue on for the remainder of the trip. We will all miss him, especially King who really enjoyed having big brother along with him on this adventure.

At the same time, we also have good news. Claire and Bill Harris will fly into Bermuda on Thursday to spend a few days with us and deliver some additional boat "stuff" that King and Ed can't live without. Good grief I have two of them making lists! King even tried to order up chocolate chip cookies from his daughter Barbara.

So here's the deal on communications and the blog postings to date. We have only been able to eek out a few emails along the way and currently have no wifi connection in the harbor. I write most days but so far can only upload with wifi. Hopefully that will change but till then I will simply load them as I can. To that end I have started dating them as I have noted a few have shown up out of sequence. Sorry bout that. Please bear with me as i discover these new skills.

Racing toward Bermuda

June 4
Overnight winds continued to lighten so we were up several times to shake out the reefs. As the winds die our chance of making landfall tonight become smaller. The worst part is that it will only be by a couple of hours that means either spending the night tacking outside the harbor entrance or hove to. Herb indicated the wind would increase tonight as a cold front passes over the island so neither sound attractive. Soooo, one more time we turn on the engines to add to our speed. As of 1 pm we have 28 miles to reach the southern end of the island before nightfall.
.........

Made it! King connected with Herb to advise him of our safe arrival just as we reached the channel marker for Bermuda Harbor and was tied up at the Customs Dock by 6:30 pm. We snuggled up in the NW corner of the anchorage in anticipation of tomorrow's winds and had the anchor down just before sunset. The crew celebrated our safe arrival with a champagne toast......what else?!

Missing?

Sunday June 3
Today started off with gusty winds blowing 20-25k. They are finally starting to swing around to the SW as promised so it was time to rearrange the sails. That decision was made just as breakfast was being served. So much for hot food. We had a great sleigh ride doing 7-8k most of the morning.

Just before lunch Ed saw a ship on AIS (our first for 3 days). We spotted it heading just off our bow several miles ahead. Much to our surprise the ship, Narova, contacted us to advise that we had been reported missing and the Coast Guard was searching
for us since yesterday morning. Well, what can one say. How does one define missing? We don't feel like we are missing. We have talked to Herb. We have sent a few emails. We've reported in 2x a day on Spot and been careful not to hit any of the emergency buttons but something has obviously gone wrong.

As it now stands, we have not been able to contact the Coast Guard or Bermuda Harbor Radio to advise the that we are alive and well, a bit thinner than when we started but otherwise in pretty good shape. Will continue to call. I'm guessing there will be more to this saga.

Aha.....mystery solved. After giving our forecast tonight Herb advised us that the Coast Guard had contacted him to see if he had heard from us. Sweet daughter did not see us on Spot and reported her concern. Herb will report all OK to Coast Guard. Unfortunately, the sat phone is not working so reassurances will have to wait until tomorrow night unless King can get an email out tonight and Email has Not been as simple as we had hoped.

We put a 2nd reef in the main. Still doing 7+ k. I went to bed early and let Ed finish the stew i was making. As I lay here, I hear dishes crashing all about the main saloon. My imagination runs wild.

Put The Pedal To The Metal!

May 31
For the past 2 days we have had little to no wind. Top speed 4 k but avg. was more like 3 k. I could walk to Bermuda faster!

Day 2 continued with light 5 k winds with the barometer stuck on 30. We put up the light air sail early and picked up a little speed. By mid afternoon we were moving around 5 k. Yea! Getting the sail up went pretty smoothly considering it was the first time for the crew.

Tonight's update from Herb was that we needed to reach Bermuda by Tuesday as gale force winds are expected on Wed. At our current speed Weds was the estimated arrival date. Herb asked if we had fuel and didn't mince words about the need to move the boat along quickly, staying south of 29. King signed off and everyone went into high activity getting the light air sail down, adding our extra fuel to the tanks and powering up the engines. The plan is to run with engines for 24 hrs or until we find wind to run at least 6 k, which ever comes first. King estimates we have a min of 3 days of fuel. Next steps will be decided following the 5 pm weather update from Herb. The gps arrival time, based on speed, quickly went from 6 days to 3!

STILL battling sea sickness. Not the hanging over the rails type but just want to go lay down kind. Will it ever stop? Very boring.

I finished reading Ruth's Sunshine Hwy last night. What fun.