“Nathan has passed his first way-point, Hole in the Wall. He reports that yesterday was a beautiful day of ocean sailing with clear skies and winds between 18 and 25 knots. Now that he is so far off-shore boat traffic is limited to cruise ships which Nathan has nicknamed “floating disco balls”. These are much easier to see than the freighters he encountered at the beginning of his journey.

While making sandwiches yesterday Nathan had an unexpected visitor; a flying fish jumped on board. Preferring his peanut butter, Nathan tossed it back into the ocean. While at the helm during the night he was actually hit in the head by another of these flying fish! It too was promptly returned to the ocean.

The wind is light this morning, only 4 knots, and the next way-point is 181 miles away. ”

Nathan’s Position this morning.

Well it’s Saturday morning and I am sitting in the most pleasant apartment in downtown Miami with a view of the city and the Port of Miami.

I arrived a little late after a great flight out of Pearson International. I had the joy of flying Air Canada Executive class this time thanks to Roger Ware’s generous donation of air miles. I must admit to being a little apprensive flying out of Kingston after the recent news of a Dash 8 crashing into a house near Buffalo, but needless to say we made it safe and sound. It was truly great to be well fed and watered and have a little leg room on the three hour flight down here from Toronto which gave me plenty of time to think about the coming couple of weeks.

For the next couple of days I’m staying with a women name Kerry Gruson (Corrected, very sorry Kerry) who is on the board of directors at Shake a Leg Miami. Shake a Leg is a centre around for disabled sailors, but also serves as a very valuable link to youth in the area, which jives nicely with our connection to the Boys and Girls Clubs. I’ll be writing a bunch more about Shake a Leg in the coming couple of days, as I’ll move the boat there as soon as I can get her in the water.

Kerry is a very cool women. Although bound to a wheel chair, she is a successful Sonar sailor with really big aspirations. (I’m told that she hopes to sail in every navigable patch of water on the earth, and from I know of her, she’ll do it.) Kerry is a writer by trade and is very well connected in the sailing scene down here. She is the type of women who takes in “strays” whether it be cats or lonesome Canadian sailors looking for a place to crash. (There were three of the former and the latter at her place last night, crashing on couches, cots, and the balcony…) I feel honoured to be one of those strays.

In the next few days I’ll be making my way through a rather large job list, trying to get the boat ready to sail as soon as I can. I still have some repairs to do after the last trip. Although I had a chance to clean up a bit after the last trip, I realized quickly how trashed the boat was as soon as I open the hatches for the first time in a couple of weeks.

I have already lined up a talk to a group of Sea Scouts that are down here sailing a couple of J24s out of Shake a Leg, so I am sure that I am going to have a full dance card between working on the boat and chatting with folks about the project.

Coconut Grove is hopping, with the Grove Artists festival going on at the moment as well as the in water boat show. The weather is beautiful down here, 25ish degrees and sunny, and it seems that the whole world is down on the waterfront enjoying the sun. Really wish all of the canucks could be down here too. I’m learning that there is a reason that everyone heads down here during the winter.

Generally, I’m feeling good about things, although a bit apprehensive about getting offshore again. There are so many things to remember and even something as stupid as running out of AA batteries can cause serious hickups in my plans.

Gotta get to work, more soon!

n

PS: For all of those that are wondering, the batteries were were hovering at 13.8V, exactly where they should be.

Nathan continues trek around Bahamas

Alison from minimus team central reports…

Hello All,

John Curis and I had a great session at the B and G Club in Kingston tonight, what wonderful kids!

Nathan is having difficulty with power that unfortunately was not resolved over the course of today. Currently, he does not have enough power to use the auto-helm. After a variety of phone calls two plans have been developed:

Plan A: After talking with Rick from Quantum Energy, tomorrow once it gets light, Nathan will try to bypass the charge controller into the main battery which (fingers crossed) could solve the problem and then he will be able to continue sailing.

Plan B: If Plan A doesn’t work, Nathan will go into Arthur’s Town on Cat Island for assistance/parts/problems solving.

Nathan is in very good spirits. There is only a whisper of wind so he does not have any sails up and is using this opportunity to study charts, enter coordinates etc. Despite this latest challenge, his is feeling relaxed and optimistic.

Thanks for your ongoing support!
Alison

On Friday the Classe Mini released the first version of the Transat 6.50 entry list, and I was releived to see my name under the DCQ entrants.

There are seven foreigners competing for DCQ spots and two compeitors have already qualified. So now it’s a race for the remaining compeitors to get all of their qualificaitons out of the way. (For foreigners, the first to fufil all of the qualification obligations, goes to the top of the list.)

We have a lot of work to do, but we are trucking along, right on schedule.

Next up: 1000nm Qualification sail. More on that in a bit.

So I said that I was going to give it to you straight…

I wanted to let people know that if you haven’t ben able to contact me over the phone recently it’s not just you.

My service provider has cut off my service. Times are tough at Minimus Sailing Team Headquarters, so please email me if you have anything of great importance.

I hope to have it sorted out soon, I’ll post when I get it online again. Sorry for any inconvienience.

EDIT: Got it sorted out. Phone is now up and running.

Hi All,

Greg and I got into Bermuda on Thursday afternoon and we are pretty much recovered from the race at this point. I’m sorry it has taken me this long to post anything, but sleeping, eating and working out a few things on the boat has taken precidence over the last few days.

I’m not quite ready to post the race report yet, but I wanted to post a couple of videos we took during the race. I hope to post a bit more latter today.

Here’s a little update from Greg. Just a note about record speeds… Right after we did this little update, we managed to get the boat up to 22.6 knots!

More in a bit

The mighty ship 680 is into the shop for a refit and whole bunch of work.

As I mentioned below, Boat Services Kingston have come on board as a sponsor and I am very happy with 680’s home for the winter. The shop out on Highway 38 is heated and has tonnes of space for us to work. I’m also very happy to have the guidance and knowledge of Niilo Avarmaa as work on the boat over the winter.

Niilo is known to be a very talented man when it comes to working on boats and fibreglass, and I am lucky to be getting a chance to see him in action and learn from him. I think what makes Niilo stand out is that he always does things properly, looking for the root cause of a problem and then working meticulously to fix it for good. It gives me great confidence that he is working on my boat.

680 will be getting a proper bottom job over the winter, and we have a whole bunch of little fixes, things to install, and improvements to make to get her ready to go offshore in June. Right now I am getting in all of the experts in various areas to come in and offer help and advice.

I’ll try to post some photos soon of her in the shop.

David Sineau, who was second across the line had this to say:

” The repair list is long. The most penalizing damage was the loss of my gennaker just before the doldrums. This is actually the sail we need the most to help us get out of the doldrums. This might have been for the better as I had to steer away from the rhumb line to sail better angles under spinnaker. I then lost all my wind instruments because of three birds who damaged them. So no more wind speed and wind angle….truly blind. Then the torn gennaker passsing under the boat damaged the keel foil, affecting greatly the hydrodynamic… Yves Le Blevec is a superb winner. He sailed really fast… I had a lot of fun sailing. I never pushed myself over the edge. My training on the water for the last 3 years paid off, I did not do any broach, which cost so much to my competitors.”

This Sunday from 1-3pm, the team will be hosting an Open Boat at the Kingston Yacht Club. We want to give the public a chance to look around the boat and to learn a little more about living aboard a mini and to tell people a little more about the race. Which is currently underway.

Everyone will be able to get aboard 680 to take a look around down below and to get a sense of what it’s like sleeping, eating and living aboard this tiny offshore weapon.

We’ll have a demonstration on how to cook freeze dried food with Chef Eric Baron (trust me you don’t generally need a chef for freeze dried…), we’ll have a slide show with some pictures and video of Minis sailing in the current Mini Transat and also give a little talk on how we interpret weather forecasts before heading out and while under way.

I think this will be a really fun opportunity to talk with folks about the project and to show people first hand how I manage sail this extreme little boat all by myself.

Hope to see you there!