Well, the crew selection has come together rather quickly, which I am extremely happy about. As First Mate I have Dave Ross from Quebec City in Canada. He should be arriving in the next week or so, but I am sure he will need a day or two to get his internal clock set to South African time.

Then there are two crew, Josh Nuttall-Smith from Francistown in Botswana and Mathys Strydom from Pretoria (South Africa). Basically, there will only be Mathys and myself who will need to pop into a consulate in SA to obtain Schengen visas before we depart. We will organise the visas early next week to get them all sorted and out of the way.

So, now all we need is for the boat to be handed over to us sometime next week and then start the preparation of the boat and provisioning for the trip.

I had somebody contact me yesterday, saying that I was "nuts"! Well, I cannot disagree with them totally, but the reason they claimed me to be "nuts" was that they thought my route was going to be up the east African coast and via the Red Sea to the Med. I am not that "nuts" - the route is to St Helena Island, Ascension Island, Cape Verdi Islands and up to Gibraltar. Then through the Med to the port of Fethiye in Turkey, where we do our clearance and then do the final sail to Gocek, where the Sunsail marina is.

So, until the crew all arrive in Cape Town, keep well and stand-by for the next instalment to the blog. This time, whilst at sea, I will try for updates every few days and get Dave to give his contribution as well - it is always interesting to get the views of somebody else!