IF this post gets onto the blog, it is the result of some rather good soldering whilst on St Helena - let's see what happens! It means that the HF radio is now working and we can send and receive email.

It appears the crew enjoyed their short visit to St Helena and had a good break and a few beers. We departed the island on Tuesday morning, about 16 hours after I had scheduled to. This was due to trying to find a leak in the plumbing of our starboard fresh water tank. I think we have found and repaired a bad joint, but we will have to see that we are not leaking more water over the next day or two. We need every drop and cannot afford wastage.

The wind prediction for the next five days is not very good - around 8 to 10 knots out of the south east. We really need 15 to 18 knots to keep us moving at a reasonable speed. There does appear to be a bit more wind more towards the Ascension Island sector and thus I have chosen a course quite a bit north of our normal route to the Brazilian waypoint, which is between the South American mainland and the island of Fernando De Noronha. Let's hope that we do actually get a little more wind than the forecasters predict.

Okay, I am going to try and post this and see what happens. Regards from all aboard Ultima Life - John.