This is it

We are all waiting on the dock until 1000 when we can leave to make the start at 1045. Progress can be followed at worldcruising.com/arc where all of the boats are fitted with a yellowbrick tracker that transmits every 6 hours. More from me in a couple of weeks

Staying busy

In anticipation of leaving the dock and spending two to three weeks offshore the crew of proteus are staying occupied with final jobs. One of which we had to recruit a friend of ours to get a rather crucial component back from the seabed


The boat has now been filled to the gunwales with fruit and veg as can be seen in the picture

One of extra crew for the Atlantic crossing is also a bit of an artist and a is customary to do before a crossing, he has painted Proteus onto the wall that backs onto the boat

The wait

This has only happened once before in 1989! The start of the ARC has been revised so there is now a start on Tuesday to mimic the Sunday start. The way it is looking is most if not all will go for the Tuesday start, us included. We are all itching to get moving and the boat is in great shape

Freak weather

Up early

This is the view from the back of the boat this morning. Straight with the tall white mast is the predecessor to proteus, an oyster 66. Beyond that is the newly built j-class Ranger that can be seen to the left a bit in the distance

Puerto caleros

We have been in lanzarote of a couple of days now. It's nice sat in the marina here but there isn't anything outside of so we have hired a car for today to explore and get to the supermarket.  The sail here was about as mixed as you can get. The straights of Gibraltar gave us 40kts of wind where we did 14.5 kts heavily reefed, the wind dropped a bit but continued to blow then turned to very variable strength but we were still making good progress.  Off the coast of morocco we kept encountering numerous fishing buoys and approximately 20ft small fishing boats quite often with one small outboard motor up to 50 miles offshore in heavy swell and squally weather. We also encountered a hail storm where the stones were as big as the end of my thumb. The only real drama I have seen since is two boats in the marina not giving any consideration and having a collision which could have been avoided with ease. Will be in las palmas in a few days to prepare for the start of the ARC

Now leaving gib. Next destination lanzarote