As I write this Disco is all dried out and looking all nice again. Our trip from Antigua was definitely a wild one. The crew was myself, Matt, Russell who had just done ASW, and Ann who did RAC2004 with us.

Ann was a last minute edition to the crew and we were thrilled when she emailed to ask if there was still space on the Monday. She landed Wednesday night with oily jacket and chocolate truffles in hand, she's so good!

Thursday at 11.30am we left the dock and headed out of Jolly Harbour, bye bye Antigua. We got the sails up and we were under way. We were on a beam reach and it pretty much stayed that way for the next 5 days, other than a light patch in the middle with winds of 6knots and less for 17hours, so we reverted to the iron sail!

Slowly the breeze built back in and eventually was blowing a constant 25knots. When I came on watch I was greeted with 38knots and a huge black cloud. We passed through it safely and it was Ann & Russell that took all the rain on there watch. It was almost ever wave that was throwing itself over the top of us and the safest place to stand was under the spray hood or that was until a wave ripped the stitching on the spray hood and the water was gushing through the side. Still it was better than having no spray hood at all.

Highlights of the trip were roast pork, chocolate chip cookies, 3 days with runs over 200miles and being the 3rd boat to reach Bermuda. We came through the cut into St Georges Harbour only to be told that the previous rally hadn't left the dock yet due to the bad weather, luckily we found ourselves a berth on the town quay.

That night we had a marvelous feast of steak, shrimps & fish and a few bottles of wine to celebrate being safely tucked up. The rest of the fleet were now having light winds as the bad weather had finally passed through. Wednesday we started the clean up process of Disco, she was quite wet in the bilges were the waves had been crashing over the deck. Ann left us at lunchtime to return back to the States, leaving us and Russell to explore Bermuda.

Having done a lot of the tours last year we didn't really do any this time, although we did make it to The Swizzle Inn for their famous rum swizzles and some great food. There were a few other boats around including Steadfast, Runaway Bunny & Affinity so we all met there to catch up. A few hours later swaggered out and headed for bed.

Russell then left us the following morning to start his long trip back to New Zealand and Matt and I started to re stock the boat ready for the arrivals of Anthony & Philip and more provisions for the trip.

On Saturday night was the prize giving and we were thrilled to hear that we were 3rd on corrected time, beaten by a Farr 565 and a Sweden Yacht 45, who had minimal motoring hours. The Admiral, our weatherman is determined to get us across that line first next leg, so lets see what we can do.