he last two months have been extremely busy so please excuse the lack of updates on the site.

The end of March and start of April were spent continuing to learn how to sail the boat. Over the Easter long weekend I took Rafiki out for my first serious solo spin – a 250 mile round-trip down to Start Point (just near Plymouth).

Then on April 20th Mikey and myself delivered the boat from Gosport down to Pornichet arriving just in time to catch a train and plane and get back to the UK on the Sunday night.

The following weekend was the Pornichet Select 650-my first race. The plan was just to get around the 300 miles course in one piece to make sure I got the race qualifying miles under my belt. The sailing was conservative but we recovered from a horrible start to record 19th out of 85 which was good effort for only my 10th time out.

Straight after the race it was into preparation for my 1000 miles qualifying sail. I left the following day and thereafter followed a torturous 12 days of horribly light winds. I had planned for a maximum of 10 days and was due back at work. I also had my mum due into London for a week so the agonisingly slow pace was immensely frustrating.

There are plenty of new photos in the Gallery.

Next up is the MA Peron (May 25-27) followed by the Mini Fastnet (June 3-10).