Delivery Update #5 - 478 nautical miles to go!

One month since departing La Rochelle, Mowzer and the crew are within a couple of days of St. Thomas.

January 31 18:42 GMT N19 26.733 W56 35.083 (591 nm since Jan 27)

Delivery Update #5

Holy cow - they're really motoring, or should I say sailing.  It seems almost surreal to see the track progressing across the map on a daily basis...

January 24  0811GMT  N23 11.781  W35 26.157  (194 nm)
January 24  1503GMT  N22 57.170  W36 19.416  (  51 nm)
January 26  0717GMT  N21 58.111  W41 22.945  (287 nm)
January 27  2045GMT  N20 52.736  W46 12.599  (277 nm)

Over these last few days they've been averaging 7-8 knots which is a good cruising speed but not pushing the boat too hard.

Registration Frustration

Trying to wrap up the Canadian registration today and it really is a process designed for Canadian built commercial vessels.  I'm sure it all works fine for fishing boats on the coast or for the big tankers on the lake/seaway, but for an itsy-bitsy catamaran in the Caribbean that had the audacity to be built offshore, the beaurocracy is living up to its name.

Neither of the two bills of sale that Fountaine-Pajot have supplied seem to be what Transport Canada is looking for although they haven't been able to articulate what is wrong with them.  One of them is signed and notarized on the TC form itself so I am going to send the original (praying they will return it) and hopefully convince them that this is it.  I also need to lay hands on the original builder's certificate which has not yet appeared from F-P so that is the next paper-chase.

Finally, the "Attestation de Juage" from the French Direction Generale Des Douanes et Droits Indirect Interregion de Bordeaux (say that 10 times fast) does not meet the requirements for a Measurement of Tonnage.  TC requires that the measurement is done by one of their certified measurers but when I called one listed for Europe, they laughed at me and told me that the ships they measure are used to transport boats like ours.  Now that Mowzer is almost in the Caribbean, I'm going to investigate one of the BVI measurers to see if he can go to the USVI to complete this requirement.

The good story in all of this is that John has already obtained a USVI registration for us so the boat can be brought into port.  We just need to get the Canadian side completed for our own ownership requirements.

Nice of the government to have cashed our cheque already though - hope they're enjoying the fun as much as I am.

Delivery Update #4

Well out in the Atlantic now and the updates become a series of latitude/longitude posts.  The plot really shows the progress.

January 19  1015GMT  N23 23.492  W24 55.649  (275nm)

January 20  1037GMT  N23 21.627  W27 27.134  (139nm in 24 hours)

January 21  1634GMT  N23 9.816    W29 55.353  (137nm)

January 22  1605GMT  N23 7.324    W31 55.364  (110nm)

That's 2095 nm done and 1870 nm to go!

Delivery Update #3

Mowzer's been underway now for two and half weeks and has begun the final but immense stage of crossing the Atlantic.

Here's the progress of the last week:

Jan 11 - evening - arrived in Lanzarote, Canary Islands
Jan 13 - 12 noon GMT - departed Lanzarote (ETA in St. Thomas - 3 weeks)
Jan 13 - 1529 GMT  N28 36.756  W13 50.598  (24nm)
Jan 13 - 1819 GMT  N28 17.069  W13 50.895  (20nm)
Jan 17 - 0622 GMT  N24 31.467  W20 3.609  (403nm)

I`m trying to figure out how to map out her progress - here`s my first attempt:

For this, I used a little app I found on the web that lets you take lat/long co-ordinates and track them on a Google map.  It's designed to work with Garmin GPS track logs but I just typed in the co-ordinates that the delivery crew has sent out.  Of course I have a couple of problems - I only have sporadic locations so some of the track crosses land as they came around Spain and Portugal (obviously, they didn't chase the birds but had to go the long way round!)  The second issue is that the picture is very nice and shows the track on the map, but it is not a link or app that I know how to post so I just took a 'picture' of it and posted that.