I really must make a confession. Everybody thinks I sailed solo down to Plymouth a few weeks ago. But in actual fact I had some help. Half way down the Irish Sea a little bird flew straight into the cabin and perched himself on one of the handholds.

His friends were all outside tweeting and chirping loudly, I presume warning him that if he stayed there he might end up in America! Anyway, he decided to abandon his friends and do some offshore sailing for a while. Every hour or so he would fly out and do a little fishing, check to make sure everything was in order on deck and then return cheeping loudly to his perch on top of my gloves… 24hrs later I realised I hadn’t seen him for a while, so I can only presume he either saw a boat with more food on, or he just decided offshore sailing on a small boat wasn’t his cup of tea. Either way, I hope he found his way home safely. It was nice to have somebody/something to talk to for a while. It’ll be interesting to see what other life forms we come across during the race.

Well, it’s my last day at work and second last day in Ireland for a while. Dinah is already down at the startline after a textbook solo delivery trip. She looks great on the marina in Plymouth. The to-do list is getting quite short. I fly to Plymouth on Sunday to start the last week of prep before the off, and of course the race starts on May 25th.

Many of you have asked how to keep up to date with the OSTAR race. There will be three main areas where any updates will be available.

www.ostar2009.co.uk – This is the main race website hosted by the Royal Western Yacht Club. Each boat will have a satellite tracker, so up to date positions and any news from the race office will be available here.

www.blogstar.org.uk – This is a great site, set up by one of the competitors. Many of the skippers will be posting blogs to this site along the way. My updates from the Dinah site will be copied here, and there will also be blow by blow race analysis by pundits, updates on weather information, and a virtual race for those of you with the inclination… The virtual race will start at the same time as the real one, and offers the opportunity for armchair sailors to pit themselves against the real competitors, and each other. Just go online and register yourself as a competitor to be in with a chance of winning a cash prize. I can see several Dublin based sailors have already registered, so I imagine there will be healthy competition… Another fantastic service offered by this site is that you can send emails or text messages to the boat for free. I won’t have much time to respond during the race, but I’m sure each message received will lift the spirits through the more difficult times. Please do put your email address in the content of the mail so that if I do have some spare time I can say hello.

And of course right here on Dinah’s own site! Any information specific to Dinah will be hosted here, hopefully updated on a daily basis.

Finally, thank you to all who have given help and support to date. Neither myself nor the boat, would be so prepared without your help. I do hope you enjoy watching the race, and I only hope I can make everybody proud.

Barry

Well, more like a slide show.  Great photos in Dublin Bay on a fine sunny day by Ingid Abery of hotcapers.com….