Monday 9th November

Only 2 weeks until we fly out to Lanzarote to join ID. Most of the "to do" list has been done and we got confirmation of the satellite communications 3 days ago which is wonderful news. All we have to do now is get the kit out to Lanzarote, get it fitted and learn how to use it - it will enable us to have access to the internet and to send back video for onward broadcast on TV so you might just see film of us mid-Atlantic on your televisions over Christmas. My thanks to STRATOS for the loan of the kit.

Today we are off to the Raymarine offices for refresher training on the C140 which is the chartplotter / radar system on the boat.  It's like a Sat Nav in your car except it uses sea charts instead of road maps.  The radar lets you see where you are and, more importantly where everyone esle is at night and if there is fog.  It also has something called AIS which will show every other boat fitted with AIS in the vicinity, their course and speed. So it's like a Sat Nav in your car where you can see all the other cars, only much fewer and, hopefully, at a much slower pace.  In particular, I need to learn about the alarms, so I can set them for when I sleep to notify me of other shipping in the vicinity.

I want to quickly mention last Wednesday, 4th November. My friend Nick lawson invited Susana and me to the unveiling of a statue of Sir Keith Park in Trafalgar Square.  Park was instrumental in the winning of the Battle of Britain in WW2.  He was a New Zealander and was in charge of the RAF squadrons who fought in the skies over England.  It was quite an emotional day to see so many surviving pilots from WW2, both men and women, with their racks of medals. The ceremony finished with a film which ended by listing some 30,000 men who lost their lives in the Battle of Britain.  Afterwards we all, some 1,500 of us, went back to a reception at the IoD on The Mall. Very humbling to be in such great company and, of the surviving 65 BoB Spitfire pilots, there were 20 or more present on the day.  CLICK HERE for more details.

I look at this photo to remind me of good people. Dawn, Sarah, Spike, Juliet and Alan

Can I end by sending my thoughts to a young lady called Juliet.  If you've read my book, you'll know that Juliet has chronic arthritis and uses a wheelchair but, having followed my sail around GB two years ao, decided to take up sailing and, within months was winning races.  I often cite Juliet as one of the sources of my inspiration, she's a wonderful lady. Unbelievably, she was mugged in her wheelchair some months ago by a 17 year old heroine addict who stole her money. The mugger was caught but, last week, the judge sentenced her to a 9 months suspended sentence which basically means popping in to see a Social Worker twice a week for the next 9 months.  At what point in time did we go from those heroic men and women (some as young as 17) giving their lives for our freedom that I mentioned above, to these detestable people who mug disabled people.  Some times I'm proud to be British, other times not so.