Voyage Delayed - Hilary Lister

Today we had had to make one of the hardest decisions that any sailor ever has to make – to delay the sail. Toby, Tony and I have all agreed that, for reasons of safety, it would be best to defer the start for one week. It means that we lose a week of summer, but we always knew that we might get held up somewhere, so our schedule has flexibility built into it. The sea is a dangerous place, as was drummed into us yesterday during sea survival training, and it’s just foolish to go out if there are any safety concerns whatsoever. On the plus side, it gives us an extra week’s training in Dover.

The sea state out of the western entrance is almost always rough, but the weather was looking particularly bad for this Monday. The wind was predicted to be against us at force 5-6 and, with a sea state of rough, the Artemis would have struggled to make any headway whatsoever.

“Me too” was fitted with an iridium phone yesterday, thanks to Olive Group. This will send out a position signal every hour, and will enable us to provide detailed graphical updates on the website of our progress and location.

My Gecko helmet now has an earpiece and microphone boom built in, thanks to Rowell’s in Cowes, who were able to dismantle a standard headset and very gently and carefully put it into my precious helmet.

I’m now looking forward to the next week to get to know my boat a little better again and, doubtless, to spend many hours in front of the computer passage planning! I think everyone will enjoy a couple of nights out of the camper vans as well.

Mark Lloyd took this photo of me sailing Me too.