Midwatch update from Bob:

Our current location:

20:36 UTC

58 degees 58 minutes North

2 degrees 08 minutes West

Course 31 degrees

spd 2.8 kts

sailing a broad reach under 2-4 kts of wind

We passed through the Caledonian Canal into the North Sea yesterday.  Cruising the canal was better than we had hoped for....an absolutely fantastic experience.  We sailed Loch Locky and Lock Ness with 25-30 kt winds at our backs under genoa or reefed genoa travelling at 6 kts of boat speed.  There is an amazing castle on Loch Ness but we were turned away from their dock because someone was having a wedding.  One of those moments where you look the guy in the eye and say "Dude, I sailed all the way from the US for this...you're kidding right!"  He wasn't kidding.  Maybe we will visit on the return trip.

We must be in a 1000 tourist photographs.  We have yet to see another vessel flying an American Flag.  Now instead of people asking if I have ever crossed

the Atlantic they say "you crossed the Atlantic in that!"

Anna has proven herself a great rope handler on the stern line.  Finn says he wants to go back to the Bahamas where it is warm.  Kim thinks she broke her toe today...on the steering wheel.  What do you say to that?

Our final day in the canal went pretty smoothly.  We filled up the tanks with

water in the morning and then passed through a loch and a bridge and then drove some miles into the City of Inverness.  We dropped 4 lochs and through a bridge and stopped at a marina to fuel up and ran into town to buy groceries.  Then we passed through the last sea loch and Midwatch was back in the salt again.  We motored for almost 10 miles to get out of the city and kept ourselves busy preparing the boat for the north sea.  I really missed my Dad for this...he is really good at tying things down and he has been doing it for months now.  He made a lot of improvements and it will take me some time to catch up to where he left off.  Once we broke into more open sea we were greeted by 20 kts of wind and and incoming tide dead on the nose and had to short tack our way forward into the night.  That sucked!  Then around 2:00 in the morning the wind died and has been flat calm ever since so on went the engine.  We finally shut the engine down 16 hours later so the kids can sleep better so we are speeding along at 2.4 kts under main and genoa.  I am chicken to set big blue.  Maybe tomorrow I will face it and get that sail back in action again.

One nice thing about the calm is there is little swell so it isn't that

uncomfortable.  Kim has been cooking up a storm.  Back to choking down all the potatoes you can eat because Norway doesn't allow them in.  We recently passed the end of mainland Scotland and currently have the Orkney Islands off the port beam.  The Shetlands will be next.  We have to watch out for huge fields of oil rigs between here and Norway and there has been a fair amount of ship traffic so we can't sleep on watch.  The calm is brought on by a high pressure system over the British Isles that is bringing sun and warmth.  It felt like summer in Maine today.

We have seen a lot of Dolphins and a few Puffins.  I think it is time to get my cod jigging gear out and get it ready to go.

We have not yet decided what part of Norway we will head for first.  Our

Northern most goal is still 700 nautical  miles away while the closest point is more like 250 nm.  We think it will be relatively calm for a few days which seems

great except we don't put many miles behind us in these conditions.

Bob, Kim, Anna and Finn