I was talking with/pm-ing Stu earlier and mentioned that i am currently on my way across the Atlantic from here on in known as the "Pond" and said that i had taken some pictures of the trip so far, he asked if i would be kind enough to post them up so here they are with a little back ground info,

We left Barcelona on the 17th and made our way to Gibraltar, we go here because we are able to purchase duty free Diesel, which gives us a significant saving, we took 160,000 ltrs approx, we normally take a few days of to give the crew a chance to rest up before the big part of the trip,


This is our ECDIS (Electronic Chart Infomation System)



This is a snap shot of our bridge, we operate with 7 changable flat screens on a fully intergrated bridge system,



This is just a shot looking out of the front of the bridge



This is a shot of the bridge at night, obviously we have to dim down all the screens for night vision,



This is a shot takern at night whilst we had 50kts + of wind over the deck, rather windy



Things calmed down so i managed to take another picture of a sunset, alot of people love them, but it is an occupational hazard that i have seen so many of the bloody things



This is our 50 meter mast, all boats over 50m must have this extra Mast head light to give notice to others of it's lenght other vessels smaller may display it choice, but ours must (we are 58m)



We have a camera mounted in the top mast



This is the following shot



This screen displays our course, speed through the water, speed over the ground, course over the ground, wind temp, sea temp, wind direction and speed in true, rudder angle indicatiors, heading error, current heading, position, time, + a few other things



As above



This morning i popped out side to take this picture of the sun rise

whilst dodging this





Obviosuly we have to obay alot of rules out at sea so i had to get out of this things way, due to it crossing my path from my right hand side.....

It will take us approximately 12 days to cross the pond from Gibraltar to St Martin.

We work 4hrs on 8hrs of 24/7 with 2 people on the bridge at all times at night and 1 during the day depending on schedule and work to be done,

Our Engineers work 6hrs on 6hrs off the whole way across

We have a weather router in the states who gives us very accurate weather predictions, at a cost of £50 an email.

It took me approximately 1 1/2 days to plan the passage and we will us some 30 different charts.

We rinse the boat down every day and use about 9 tons of water that we produce our self (reverse osmosis plants)

We will change atleast 5 times zones with out double checking

We receive TV until approximately 1 days out of the Canary Islands and will lose Broadband Internet at the same time, then we will have to download e-mails via another Satelite,

For those of you that have never seen the boat here she is







Another bloody sunset shot

Cheers Mike