Update 7th June 2010

OK............this is my news letter update.

The last 7 days has seen the start of the great voyage...

We left Palm Beach, Florida on Friday afternoon 29th May.....and to day, 10.30pm Sunday evening 6th June we are arriving in Colon, the Caribbean side of the Panama Canal

What an amazing trip it has been passing down through the inside passage of the Bahamas, then thru 'The Old Bahamas Passage’ then along the northen shore line of Cuba, turning right(or South)to pass between Haiti and Cuban en route to Panama.

We went quite close to the US detention center Guantanamo Bay in Cuba......as we went past a US Coast Guard Cutter stood off us and once we spoke to them they moved on.!!

Jets fly over contantly coming out of the Key West US airforce base so its all pretty well guarded. The US Govt has a 300 year lease on Guantanamo Bay so it needs to protect it.. Apparently by having the detainees in Cuba they do not have any US Civil rights etc.!!

The seas have been generally good although we had a few nights of a 20NMPH wind on our port bow quarter which was a little uncomfortable......the boat handles it all right but it is not really designed for rougher water and things move around quite a lot....we had sandwiches for dinner a few nights running.!!

The run past the Bahamas was fascinating.....going quite close to many islands we saw really old lighthouses that reminded us of all the olden days of shipwrecks and pirates etc...we are actually traveling over many old wrecks from 100's of years ago.

The trip across the Mexican Gulf was uneventful except for all the ships travelling past us ..either going down to the Panama Canal or having just been through it.

Our fishing exploits have not been brilliant...we have 3 large Dolphin Fish to date. all were eaten and how yummy they were.

We passed a small pod of Killer Whales, they have huge Dorsel Fins..a bit scary.

Today we will recieve instructions about our passage through the Canal.....we will have to wait in line and go through when we are told.

Once we are through the canal we will spend a day in Panama city and then we are off for our 800 NM run to the Gallapogas Islands and think back to what Charles darwin first thought of when he saw the Islands in the 1700's.

Cheers now.
Rick

Update 2nd June 2010

Island Voyager has now been to sea for four days. They have been running with no auto pilot and have been experiencing 20knot winds on the ¼. The winds have generally been north east and it has been extremely hard to steer. Everything is together now so things should get better. It has been too rough to do much work. Rick and Mick start their shift at 2am and work till 6am. They then have time off and come on shift again from 2pm to 6pm.

Their bearing as we speak is North 2o .25.800
West 074.06.9500

They are on the north east corner of cuba just about to enter the passage called windward passage with lies between cuba and Haiti. They then have approx 700 to 750 nautical miles straight on to Panama. They are travelling 140 nautical miles per day so if we divide the 750 nautial miles to Panama by 140 they are travelling, they will expect to get to panama in 5 and a half days from right now.

Rick said that they have been travelling at times about 7 nautical miles off shore and have been able to see villages at night and storm cells during the day and night.
He sounded very tired and said he would try and call again when they get to Panama. He said to say everything is fine and there will be more good news soon.