Saturday, November 19, 2011

Getting Ready to Depart for Atlantic Crossing

Lone Star has been in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria since November 2nd while the crew has been preparing for the Atlantic crossing.  We have joined the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) for the adventure and the fleet of 250 boats will leave Las Palmas around noon on November 20th for the crossing which should take between 16 and 21 days.

During the opening day celebration we got a picture of three of the crew on the left (Ron Horton, Craig and Ed Robeau) along with a few other Americans that participated in the parade.  We are now ready to go and hope you will follow our progress via the ARC website or our blog.  

One of the items provided by the ARC is a tracking devise on each boat that reports our position every 4 hours.  If you go to this link ARC Fleet Viewer  you will be able to find Lone Star.  On the left hand side of the Fleet Viewer is a tab titled Teams.  Click on that tab and scroll down till you see Lone Star.  Click on Lone Star and you will be able to follow our progress.  Also, we will be (hopefully) making daily log entries.  Above the Fleet Viewer and below the ARC 2011 Banner is a group of drop down tabs.  Click on Daily Log and scroll down till you see Lone Star.  Click on Lone Star and you'll get an inside view of what it's like to cross the pond. 


Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Gibraltar to Gran Canaria

The delivery crew consisting of Craig, Mike and Ed arrived in Gibraltar on October 26th and proceeded to bring Lone Star back to life after she sat unattended at Alcaidesa Marina in La Linea, Spain for 60 days. La Linea is right next to the Gibraltar airport on the Spanish side. After getting Lone Star hooked back to shore power and bringing the systems up we walked into La Linea and had a late lunch.

On the 27th we motored from Spain to Gibraltar and checked into Marina Bay Gibraltar so we would be closer to stores for provisioning. We focused on provisioning that day so we would have time for a tour of the rock before we left. On Friday Mike and Craig toured the rock. Ran into one of Mike's cousins on the mountain before going into Saint Michael's cave.  Took a couple of pictures of the part that had a theater in it.  It is still used today.

We used a favorable weather window to begin the passage from Gibraltar to Las Palmas on 29 October. After spending the morning doing some last minute provisioning we slipped our lines to begin the voyage to Las Palmas, Canaries. We had winds off our stern the entire way along with an Atlantic swell that made Lone Star roll about 20 degrees on each crest. That made it uncomfortable to sleep until we got the hang of wedging ourselves in the bunks.

We used the motor to stay ahead of a weather system in the mid Atlantic. After four nights at sea Lone Star was motoring into Gan Canaria on 1 November and Ed was preparing to raise our Texas flag along with the ARC flag. I am glad we were able to leave when we did because several boats that left a day or two later encountered larger waves and had very uncomfortable passages.