And Off We Go
28 May 2012 | North Atlantic
John
Yesterday at noon we departed Fort Lauderdale with the raising of the 17th Street bridge as we passed under. Then it was out the channel to sea. We were a week late in departing, due to tropical storm Beryl interfering with our plans. It really is a relief to finally be at sea. And nobody has been sea sick!
I used the fast flowing Gulf Stream to help us get north east and at 02:00 this morning we had covered the 100 nautical miles to my first waypoint north of the Bahamas. We have now turned east-northeast to our next waypoint just north of Bermuda. I put this waypoint into our route just in case we needed to make a stop in Bermuda to effect any repairs or take shelter from any storms.
Last night we had some spectacular electrical storms just to the north of us. Thank goodness our route did not take us into their path as the lightning was really wild and was striking the sea on a regular basis - certainly not something to get involved in.
For those not familiar with the blog, I try and post our position each day on a web site called Shiptrak. The link to the site is on the right of this page under the favourites column. Simply click it and it will bring up a map of the world with our latest noon position, marked with a red bubble. If you place your mouse on the bubble, it will give our position and a short message. I try to do the post after our local noon each day but, please remember that as we head east, our local noon changes as we get into new time zones.
At the moment we are out of the current and proceeding quite slowly, doing just over 5 knots. Ultima Life is not a fast boat, but she is quite comfortable. I will be trying to make a new blog post every four days and keep you updated on what has been happening on board. For now I bit you all well with regards from Zsofia, David, Mehmet and myself, John.