Day One...Dolphins to see us safely away

It was still pitch black when John got up at 4am to set the boat for sail. I had an extra 40 winks but joined him at 4.40am. Most people know me for a girl who hates mornings and they are to be avoided at all costs, but today was a very special day as we motored out of Lorient and the adrenalin kept me upbeat. My excitement hit the roof when John spotted the dolphins swimming beside us. By now the sun had risen and we could clearly see a pod of about 8 dolphins. Awesome!

As we sailed into deeper waters it was time to kill the motors and put up the mainsail and the Genoa and look to the wind. It was pretty cold so we were both layered up large and wearing our spanking new lifejackets and life lines to attach to the boat to save us in case we fell overboard! 

The weather was typical for Brittany, 4 seasons in one day, so we had wind, rain, sun and what felt like sleet. We had 12 hours of constant rain and our waterproofs were quickly soaked through. The waves were big and rolling and we were being bounced all over the place and unfortunately, I went down with a huge bout of sea sickness. Mortifying, frustrating and I felt incredibly ill for the rest of the journey. Happily after 12 hours the rain finally stopped.

Luckily, John is an incredible man and sailor. He has had to sail this technical, physical boat all on his own as I was no use to man or beast and slept for most of the time. He managed to shut his eyes briefly for an hour or so during the day and night of the first day. But he lived on his sheer determination and set the autopilot, trimmed the sails, trying to make them go at the optimum speed and was always looking out for other boats and ships which is not easy as our boat is quite broad and seeing to the starboard side from the seated position on the port side means peering through the windows of the salon.

There were a few boats around at night, particularly fishing ships and trawlers to look out for.

I missed the sunrise but came round to see we had passed Land's End and the sun was shining and the sky was blue with fluffy white clouds.  Rule Britannia!

We had a relatively quick passage at the beginning doing incredible speeds of up to 18 knots but then lost the wind and had slowed down to 5 knots, so John decided to take down the Genoa and raise the Genniker to give us more speed or we would be heading into Saundersfoot at about 10pm instead of the 5pm we had aimed for. It took a huge effort on John's part to rig it up but once done we picked up speed and achieved 10-14 knots

 Finally, we were sitting in the sun, enjoying the speed of boat and realising how superb she really is and how our dream is now a reality.  We reached safe mooring at Saundersfoot at 7pm after 38 hours and 324 nautical miles.
Marsaudon Composites have created a magnificent catamaran and we feel so proud to call the Number 7 boat....Ours.