Transat Complete

James pointed out that we had only really crossed the Atlantic when we arrived on the eastern seaboard of the USA, so today we completed our transatlantic crossing, taking 3 months, 18 days. In reality, our last night at sea was very quiet as the wind and seas dropped to nothing. The fabled Florida Current was as strong as predicted, helping us along with an extra 3kts mid flow.

We sighted Canaveral and the Space Centre launch pads a couple of hours before dawn and entered the port at breakfast. The approach has various turtle- and right whale habitat restricted areas, and right on cue, a large leatherback turtle surfaced as we entered the channel. We literally arrived just in time, weather wise. We had no sooner secured our lines when an almighty thunderstorm hit the coast.

Now we have a day to sort ourselves out and recover before we visit the Kennedy Space Center tomorrow, then head for Tampa to visit relatives and the zoo / aquarium. The forecast for the next few days is poor for sailing but we have paid for a week here and then it's off to sea once more for the three day passage up the coast to Beaufort NC and the start of our adventure on the Intracoastal Waterway up to Chesapeake Bay. If any of you reading this have suggestions of things not to miss between here and there, we'd be delighted to hear from you.

For those who asked about the tracking during the race, we had to carry a bespoke Argos tracker which pinged our position every fifteen minutes. Once the race finished, we had to give it back!