It has been quite a number of days of rushing around, going to stores, buying the last things we needed, closing and opening accounts... the list of things to do was many pages long and it kept growing instead of decreasing. But at last we set sail last Sunday from our home port after 3 ugly days of rain and cold, having to stow things in the rain. Daniel's good friend Will and his step Dad Steve came to send us off with a small glass of Champaign!

After fueling and leaving the harbor we faced 20+ winds and, unfortunately, lost control of the main causing a block on the outhaul (the line that pulls the sail out) to brake. Fortunately, we were able to "rig" it and finally set sail at around noon. We expected to anchor in a river and arrive at Hampton on Monday afternoon. However, the winds kept increasing rather than calming down as it has been predicted - more than ever we now know fully well that weather forecasts are to be believed but not to be fully trusted. The wind was coming from the south so we sailed "wing-on-wing" for a few hours. But the wind kept building up and the waves increased to 4-6 feet so we took down the jib and started thinking about reefing the main. We kept waiting for the winds to calm but they never did. We decided to keep sailing arriving to Hampton in roaring 32+ knots of winds! For those of you who have not sailed before this is a a fair amount of wind but our boat is designed to take this kind of conditions (and worse) and assuming the sailors (us) do the right things we should be fine.

This week has been a mad rush of events here in Hampton and it is easy to loose sight of 70 sail boats around us in the marina getting ready to leave on Sunday. It is a beautiful sight and we feel privileged to be part of this event. We have been preparing the boat (additional stuff), going through boat inspections, repairing the main, installing an iridium phone (which is a phone that goes through satellite to be used for emergency calls as it is very expensive to use). We have also been attending meetings and getting to know other ralliers. It has been quite an experience. Today,Saturday the third at 5:30PM, the excitement is fairly high. We expect light winds after the storm that hit us for the last 3 days finally passed today.

For a gallery of pictures of our trip and the boats here at the Blue Water Yatch Center where we all the boats are docked you can go to:
http://picasaweb.google.com/sailingourway/2007_11_03?authkey=kSFwhpFrg8c

For those of you who are interested, our boat has been fitted with a chip that will track our course throughout the passage. If you go to http://www.carib1500.com/c1500/index.htm you can see where the fleet is. The website is supposed to show the location of each boat -- track us there.

We hope to be able to make entries to the blog underway but we are having some technical problems. If you don't here from us in the next 10 days you know why.

To each of you thank you for your support and your interest in our trip. We know you will be sending good wishes our way.

Hasta Pronto!