<h3>The Atlantic, first ocean!</h3>
        <p>The Atlantic crossing story, abbreviated version. Originally written 
          about 2 or three days after arriving St Lucia.</p>
   The Weather is - well 
                I'm not sure I have words that can describe how much better it 
                is than what I am used to, well here's an example one fine day 
                in the middle of the night it was blowing force 7, possibly force 
                8 at times and I was wearing oilies - and wait for it a T-shirt 
                underneath. The crossing was uneventful, we tore about 6 inches 
                of spinnaker lost one glass and broke a mug. The only other source 
                of tired was looking out to sea. We saw 1 lot of dolphins 2 ships, 
                about five yachts and Dorado (fish) - and damn fine they tasted 
                to, Sam also harvested the automatic fish (flying), the only other 
                things we saw were waves water sky and the boat - I spy wasn't 
                much fun. Instead of I spy we played Just a minute which proved 
                raucous to say the least, Simon was very good at the technical 
                stuff like repetition, I tended towards the more tenuous bits 
                of deviation. We took 23 days to do the crossing, we were first 
                Ferro-cement boat, which we are justly proud of, some among are 
                more pessimistic rivals point out that we were also last ferro 
                boat. </td>
               <img src="content/pic/trip1/manfish.jpg" alt="Man or Fish? (manfish.jpg)" align="left"></td>
         </div>
        <p align="left">If you get this quickly then email me back I will check 
          to see before we leave here in early Jan. Sam's Mum and Sister are coming 
          out as is Penny, for Christmas. They are land lubbers mostly and will 
          probably find reasons for me to be on land and spending money which 
          is a drawback. </p>
        <p align="left"> The logged distance was 2840 I think, there is some confusion 
          as the log forgot a couple of times and also after 999.9 it reverts 
          to 0 Nautical miles that is. </p>
        <p align="left"> This email is long cos I'm writing it on Sam's coal fired 
          lap top, a sterling piece of Victorian engineering also down loads weather 
          maps from AM radio which is nice when it works (not often). </p>
        <p align="left"> I think I should explain automatic fish at this point, 
          they jump out of the water usually in the middle of the night and fly 
          up to about 100 yards, quite impressively dodging waves etc. presumably 
          to escape other fish with horrible nasty pointy teeth. This is a wonderful 
          defence mechanism, provided of course some malicious ocean hippie hasn't 
          filled that particular bit of ocean with 37 foot of ferro cement sail 
          yacht. In the event that this happens they find them selves lying on 
          the deck looking very surprised, then come morning the skipper picks 
          em up and fries them for breakfast. </p>
        <p align="left"> I haven't had the opportunity to do much swimming as 
          yet we only got the chance to swim once on the way across, the rest 
          of the crew had to force me to get out of the water, they wanted to 
          start the engine, I was there for the week. </p>
        <p align="left"> Speaking of engines we only motored 21 hours, not bad 
          out of over 3 weeks, Sam's Wind generator and solar panel were enough 
          to run lights and instruments, (not nav lights, why burn 2 amps all 
          night if theirs no one around to see it.) </p>
        <p align="left"> St Lucia. is really gorgeous, its a mountainous volcanic 
          Island complete covered in rain forest, so far I haven't been bitten 
          by any mosies, being in about helps they don't like salt, basically 
          I'm not coming back!</p>