We leave today (21^st Nov) and the race starts in 15 days! We fly at 8 o’clock this morning from Bristol Airport out to Las Palmas and then get a connecting flight to La Gomera which arrives at 6pm.

The race organizers put every team through a thorough scrutineering process which is why we have to be in La Gomera 2 weeks before the start of the race. They will check that we have all the correct equipment, that we have a well prepared diet program and that we are fully competent with all the electrics on board. Having passed the scrutineering we will pack the boat, make any last amendments and then she will be lifted from her cradle into the water, ready for departure at 10am on Sunday 6^th December.

To track our progress please go to the Home page and click on the link. This will take you to the Woodvale Atlantic Rowing Race 2009 website which lists all the teams and a map of the Atlantic is shown with coloured dots to indicate each boat’s position. You can also click on the boat’s name (ours is Heritage Explorer) and this will give you a new map with just our position shown on it and below will be information about our progress. 

We will also be writing a blog which we will try to do every few days. Our blog will be on this page of the website. We will be sending these to a friend of ours, Kate Flavell, via email, who will then add them to the website. Kate is our social point of contact whilst we’re at sea and so if you wish to contact us please do so through her. She will be filtering our emails (we can’t receive attachments or long emails which is why she will be passing them on to us) and looking after all of our admin whilst we’re away. Please contact us, through Kate, at ‘atlanticrowyt@googlemail.com’.

We have a satellite telephone but in order to save power and credit we will only be making calls, not receiving them.

Finally, a big, big thank you to all of our sponsors for your huge generosity and support. We are extremely grateful and very excited to find ourselves in this position. We are hoping to arrive in Antigua sometime in the first few weeks of February. Therefore, we’d just like to wish everyone a Happy Christmas and look forward to seeing everyone when we’re back.

We now have 3 weeks until we fly out to the Canary Islands and 5 weeks until the race starts. This will be our penultimate ‘Progress Update’ – we’ll write one more just before we leave and then we will begin our blog once the race starts. We will be sending our blogs back to a friend in the UK who will be adding them to the Latest News section of our website. There will be more information about all of this in the last ‘Progress Update’. 

The last few weeks have been very, very hectic. We have both said on several occasions that we have never had so much to do before! We have written endless ‘To Do’ lists and spent hours and hours in various shops around Bristol getting the last few pieces of equipment together, then bringing it back and fixing it to Heritage Explorer or packing it away in boxes for shipping.  We have packed 180 ‘snack bags’ full of pork scratchings, peperami, lots of chocolate bars, sweets, nuts and other snacks to both keep us energized and the morale up. We have a chicken and mushroom pot noodle each for every 500 miles as a treat and some Lindt chocolate for Christmas! Along with a box full of sauces to spice up our freeze dried meals, we have some nicer wet rations, all of which should mean that we eat well. 

Heritage Explorer was shipped on Tuesday 20^th October from Tilbury Docks in London. We packed all of the equipment and food into boxes and then into the lockers and main cabin on board. We drove through the night on Monday to ensure that we arrived on time for 9am on Tuesday; she was lifted off her trailer onto a cradle and then into a container. It was all very easy and she should be ready and waiting for our arrival in La Gomera on 21^st November.

We are currently in the middle of sailing courses which we have chosen to do to improve our navigation and seamanship skills. They have been really useful so far and also allowed us time on the water, despite not having the boat to train in. We have been working out our course for the crossing and have chosen a southerly route in order to make the most of the trade winds.

 A company named Trango which ‘provides integrated disaster management and operational support’ have sponsored us with all our comms equipment, including our sat phone and credit, a solar gorilla and a power gorilla, and also support throughout the crossing via sat phone. If we need to speak to anyone in particular, such as a doctor, they can put us in touch. We are delighted to have them as a ‘Gold’ sponsor.