Music
Music
Music
Music
Music
Music
Oh, I didn't ask you to do that.
The adventure begins.
Celia on Usain Francis 50 is on a maiden voyage to K-Tam
where we shall be commissioning many of her systems.
As you will be seeing a lot of this instrumentation during our voyage.
So let's stop and take a look at each instrument in turn.
We are approaching Naisal Lagoon now which has a notoriously difficult entrance.
We're now turning to follow the transit through the Lagoon entrance known as the Heads.
We have to be careful because this transit takes us very near to these rocks on the port side.
A pretty special berth has been reserved for us right outside the restaurant.
Does it get any better than that?
Our plans to be through the Heads at Slackwater were blighted by a loose connection
which prevented an engine from starting.
So now the outflow in current will make for a more challenging exit from the Lagoon.
The Heads are a good example of where two engines are better than one.
If your only engine were to fail, you'd be into a life-threatening situation.
Now we're motoring with the Genoa up and the engines doing 2000 rpm.
The Cape of Good Hope ahead.
As we entered the harbour, the wind was blowing over 30 knots with very little sea.
A more pleasant inner harbour.
After many sea trials in St Francis, it was here in Cape Town that we were to do the final commissioning of the boat
and take full ownership of it.
We were to spend many weeks here on that commissioning of all the systems.
Being the major port in South Africa, this is a place that you will see both from all over the world.
Had we been going to encounter bad weather, it would have been within the first 48 hours of leaving Cape Town.
Now that we're past that, we should be sailing into improving more settled conditions.
A night's day out from Cape Town and St Helena comes majestically into sight.
James Town, the capital, nestles in this steep-sided valley.
Napoleon was buried here in this peaceful valley of Willows in 1821.
Three days in St Helena just simply weren't enough, but our crew had a timetable to keep to and we had no choice but to leave.
This leg from St Helena to Grenada is some 4,000 nautical miles.
The genica provided us with high-dainy managers, almost to prove a wonderful sail.
We were to use it day and night.
Charplotter here shows the track of Celia and the tax we did before St Helena. The cross ahead is the halfway point of the entire trip.
The yellow arrow indicates the wind direction, right on our tail.
Our plan was to try to make it all the way to Grenada without stopping,
but we did have a contingency plan to call in at some South American countries to require fuel.
On the radar you can see the high intensity of the storms being indicated by the red colour.
With 24 knots of wind behind us, we were managing speeds of between 10 and 12 knots soared that speed over the ground.
We thought it may be interesting to show you how we get our GRIB weather forecast using our satellite system.
We zoom into the area of the world that we are in, and then we select a rectangle in which we want the weather forecast.
And there is our weather forecast with the arrows showing the direction and the flights on the arrows to strengthen the wind.
Now off the shoulder of South America, we're joined by our first dolphins.
The red marks on this charplotter show our daily progress.
We were now passing the Amazonian river basin. With the wind no longer behind us, but off our starboard side,
we managed to pick up that two and a half knot current.
It was under these conditions, but on a number of days, we made over 240 miles in the day.
The circles on the charplotter indicate our daily progress since leaving St. Helena.
And could safely and prickly bay Grenada. This is the end of our crossing, but this is just the beginning of our adventures.
