Well what a 48 hours we’ve had!!!

In the first 24 we had sailed bang on 260 NM which means we averaged 10.9 knots for the 24!!!

We have had consistently 30 – 35 knots of wind behind us or as I say, “up the chuff!”

The record of 20.9 stood , until yesterday when, moi, Paulo Speedy Gonzales Adamson was steering Lush when the perfect wave arrived with the perfect gust of wind…LUSH listened to her skipper and dropped into that wave and launched herself like a base jumper off a mountain down the face of what was a good proper ocean roller! We all jumped for joy when the log topped out at 21.2 knots!!!

Dave (Previous record holder), Marty & Audrey could only watch as they saw their previous record tumble and now Conor and James the other members of the newly named watch, “Team 21.2” are now taking lessons in being, well smug, in our new name!!! That is until they come back at us!

21.2 knots…we reckon that could be a new Oyster World Record……we will just need to check with the team back at Guinness to check the validity of that!!!

The rest of yesterday was just stunning, decent breeze, hot sun and the Atlantic was a deep blue!

Speaking of deep…the crew looked a bit perturbed when they asked how close was the nearest land…I started off by saying, “well around 1000 miles but of course the nearest land is 6km….DOWN!!!!!”

Anyhow…..onto the past 24 hours…..well I feel like Noah with the Ark!

There is rain and then there is RAIN!!!!! Even Joe (Aurdey’s Dad) who comes from the west of Ireland said, “I’ve never seen rain like it…now Paul…don’t you be complaining next time you’re in the West and giving out about the rain!!!”

Last night saw us challenged with Squall after squall after squall!

In the Atlantic during the day all that lovely hot sun builds rain squalls which we have to dodge at night, handy as rain reflects RADAR and one of the night watch instructions is keep an eye on the RADAR and prepare for any big splodges coming at us!

To put this into perspective – in these squalls the wind can change from 15kts to 50 kts in the space of a minute with a massive wind shift and its normally consists of a load of rain to!!! Makes night watches go quickly but you have to be prepared to act quick and anticipate the squalls course, speed and handy move!!!

So there I was lying in my bunk when the familiar sound of chief engineer, Alan Canavan (allabama) came on the intercom – “Paulo, its looking real nasty in front of us, real dark and lightening!!!I think you come and have a look at this…..”

So I arrive onto deck to find Al, Joe & Wallis looking up to weather looking at a dark cloud….I felt like a doctor asking for exact symptoms to make a decision of what we should do….”okay guys so can we see it on the RADAR?” “No” Al replied, “Can we see fork lightening striking the sea?” “No” “Have we heard thunder at all?” “No”

I pondered for a moment to make an informed decision…”Okay guys, so what we are seeing is upper level lightening which is between the clouds so we just need to be prepared for the wind……don’t worry about the lightening!”

So we cracked on and shortened sail and I am glad we did cos by the time we arrived into that dark mass which was 3 hours later the wind was up to 45 kts and the rain was horizontal – complete white out!!!

Just before it hit we got a warning when the wind shifted by 60 degrees to the west and we had to spin LUSH onto a new course of due North to keep her sails full……..we had to act quickly as I knew if we could bring her back round to a course of 260 we would get through it quicker and the wind would come back to SE and we could settle in for the night…

So Dave clipped onto the outer jackstay from the inner one and made his way up to the mast to ease the preventer so we could sheet in the main to alter course – once he was back we started our engine, furled our jib and headed back to 260……Lush was now punching into the weather….35 knots of wind, 20 foot seas and so much rain that we couldn’t even see the back of the yacht!!! After an hour and a half of feeling like we were being lashed from the heavens, Lush’s big grey hull popped out the other side of the squall and the wind eased and backed round to the SE!

We reset our sails and cracked on towards Antigua! Since then its has lashed and lashed with a constant breeze from the SE of around 25 – 35 kts…no bother to the mighty yacht LUSH!

What is amazing out here is you realise how insignificant we really are compared to the elements and the big picture…….

I’m a big believer in, “Don’t sweat the small stuff!”

In fact all we can ever do is focus on the things we can control in our lives and change them…..for me right now that’s the trim of our sails, the course of our yacht and keeping the team happy and strong! I can’t control the weather around us right now so it would be pointless getting hung up on it!!! A great life lesson I think…we our dealt our cards but we can choose how to play them! Once we get to that point in our heads we then realise what we really can achieve in life…which in my book is
anything…absolutely anything!

So I will leave you now as the smell of chicken curry and food is passing the chart table……and I need to eat!!!

So god bless, live with passion and remember…..one life…make sure your living it!!!

Loads of Love Paul & Team Lush :0) xxxx

As I sit here on Lush’s chart table all I can hear is the sound of Audrey shouting, “come on!!” as we let rip down another mid Atlantic wave!

The record is 18.2 kts which smashed the previous record of 17.3! Lush is an incredible machine that when you set her up and let her go she will charge down the Atlantic and carve up the ocean as though she is being driven by a thousand pure Irish thoroughbred race horses!!!

As we are an Irish yacht you will find us drinking, “Barry’s Tea” and eating freshly baked, “Odlum’s Bread” filled with Superquinn Sausages!

Alan, Lush’s engineer is mighty on his guitar and he strums away with Christy Moore songs to our hearts content as we feel….well all a bit, “be–jaysus!!”

14.4 I just heard as Audrey, Marty & Dave try to topple the 18.2 set by Myself, Conor & Woody in the early hours of this morning!

There is loads of criac onboard and I am always amazed how sailors when brought together on a yacht to cross an ocean just seem to get along great and we will always have that bond of sailing an ocean together!

Fishing isn’t go so well at the mo…..we have only had one bite but he broke the line and so the stories of us hooking a shark have grown to it being a great white as it’s the only fish in the sea that could keep up with us!!!

We have made 701.15 miles in 3 days! That’s an average speed of 9.7 constantly over 3 days which anyone will tell ya is great going!

“lovely…16….lovely!!” just was screamed from the deck and I am now typing at about 25 degrees heel and can hear the ocean rushing past the hull and its sounds just like a waterfall that’s trying to empty a really full river!!!

Despite us trucking or “sucking diesel” as Joe would say LUSH is stable, safe and never once feels as though she won’t look after us and give us the sail of our lives!!!

Holy Moly we just hit 20.9 kts!!!! So our record has tumbled and Audrey, Marty & Dave are smug as hell!

Will keep you posted with progress and in the meantime from the good yacht LUSH, One Life…make sure your living it! :0)

Today Tuesday at Noon, and we are 24 hours from cast off at Las Palmas and already we have covered 236 Nm.

The winds have been up to 40 Knots – a bit more appearing on the clock form time to time!

The boat is doing up to 15 knots down the rollers and is well able to maintain a steady 11 to 12 knots – amazing for a 70 tons of sleek boat.

We have a total of nine on board. It is great to have crack crew for putting in the reefs, changing the jib over to goosewinging and so on.

We knew from the dockside in Gran Canaria what a stunner the boat is – there was a succession of folks coming to admire her. Now we know she performs as well as she looks.

It was great to have Anne McGovern on the Las Palmas dockside to wave us all the best as her husband Joe and daughter Audrey set sail.

For Joe, Martin, James, Dave and Conor this the dream of a lifetime come true.

We have the fishing line out, the sun screen on, on a heading of 250 and enjoying every moment

Martin Mc Carthy

Southampton – Las Palmas

14thto 22nd Nov 2012 1546NM

Maiden Voyage aboard Lush (Oyster 885)

Skipper: Paul Adamson

First Mate: Audrey Adamson

Engineer: Alan Canavan

Hostess: Wallis Murphy Munn

Team Lush -(Left to Right)

Wallis, Audrey, Paul & Alan

Delivery Crew for this leg: Alan Coker (Oyster), Matt (Oyster), Joe Mc Govern (Audrey’s Dad), and Collette Goode

Wow what a great passage this has been, after months and months of preparation we finally slipped our lines and left Southampton on Wed 14th. We only got the keys to Lush 6 days earlier so while we’d been working away in Southampton since mid August we couldn’t load any of our things onboard till the boat had finally been handed over from Oyster (the boat builders). Between the four of us we had a rough plan as to where we’d stow our bits and pieces…
These aren’t just any ‘bits and pieces’…. this was everything we thought we’d need for a round the World trip, bearing in mind that most of the places we’ll be going to are small islands with plenty of beaches and palm trees but very little in the line of shopping!

Our spares list had been growing by the day as Alan, our engineer, put together the

‘what-if’ list!! ‘”it’s all about anticipation,” Paul would say…. in ocean sailing we don’t want to be in a position where we’re ‘reacting’ to things going wrong.

Alan (right) whipping running rigging on the hoof for reefing!

We need to anticipate it before we go and have the spare part there when/if something or other eventually gives this way we can keep to our schedule and not get delayed waiting for a part to arrive in some far fetched corner of the World. We need to keep this boat on time so we don’t miss out on a weather window. Trade winds all the way baby!!!

Wallis had just as big a list as Alan….

She’s looking after all the interior of Lush and on a boat this size that’s a lot….. there’s all the bed wear and cleaning equip along with the soft furnishings that gets stowed away while we’re on passage… to add to this

Wallis is a yoga instructor and massage therapist and has brought enough yoga kit for 12 peeps and a massage table to look after all the hard working sailors backs!!

Wallis, Audrey & Collette doing Yoga on the bow at sea! (Right)

As for Paul and I … well we couldn’t go to sea for 18 months without bringing our Kites and boards etc.. for some kite surfing in pretty cool spots! There’s various other bits of waterspout toys packed away onboard. Paul got some massive lines for the Panama canal to tie Lush alongside and in excess of a few hundred charts along with a load pilot books and manuals for every piece of electronic kit on the boat.

And then there was all the galley equip and food provisions…… I had 12 boxes of galley equip which I fitted between 4 cupboards in the galley!! It’s unreal how the boat just swallowed up all of our stuff. We reckon we’ve put 4 tones of kit on the boat between everything and the majority of this stuff is stowed under the floorboards, in the bilges and under any side lining in the boat!! I spent (along with my Mums help!) about 12 hours food shopping over 4 days so that we’d have all the ingredients necessary to tackle any fancy recipes when we get to the Caribbean and beyond! For the two main passages to the Caribbean (the 8 day Las Palmas one and the 14 day Atlantic one) I cooked up most of the dinners in advance, vac-packed and frozen them. We just don’t have the storage space to make dinners up from scratch and it generates a load of rubbish, which we then have to stow on the boat till we reach land, so cooking in advance is the way to go and in fairness ‘tis a lot easier to reheat some grub then start chopping and preparing food in big swell at a 45degree angle! Obviously I did get a load of fresh fruit and salad to keep us reasonably healthy afloat!!

For the 6 days of packing Lush we didn’t stop once…. It was like a full on game of tetras (you know the game you’d have played on your first phone/computer). You’d fit something into a space and then turn it into a million different positions so that the space could be used to its maximum.

Wallis’s mum Sarah, Alan’s two daughters, Amber and Cori along with his wife Kizzy worked flat out with us for 5 days solid. My parents arrived at the weekend and they were put to work straight away. Collect Goode joined us on the Monday night and definitely noticed the difference between this and the Sailing West Fastnet campaign last year onboard our reflex 38’, which didn’t even have a cooker!! Collect had fractured her foot the day before the Fastnet race itself after having done all the training etc… She was gutted about it at the time but joining us onboard Lush for the maiden voyage to the Canaries has more than made up for it!

After our months of sorting, organizing and packing ‘twas just mighty to finally set sail on the 14th of Nov! The trip down was ideal with calm seas and a light easterly breeze initially and then building to 30knots from the North, lovely! The last few days were calm again with a bit of a swell and we had managed to peel our layers daily finally finishing in Las Palmas with shorts and t-shirts, a bit of a change from all the thermals, mid layers and heavy weather oillies in Biscay! We worked a 3hour watch system with 6 hours off and then two ‘happy hour’ sessions a day where all crew would be on deck together for lunch, dinner and our daily dance class with Wallis to keep us all active!!! Now that’s some sight, eight of us dancing around the aft deck! Classic!

We arrived in Las Palmas 8 days to the hour later on Thursday 22nd and have been pretty flat out since gearing up for the Atlantic crossing which we expect to take us around 14days or so. Our new crew have joined us and we hope to set sail tomorrow, will try keep you posted on route!! Must dash for now… lots to do…… happy days 

Paul using Astro Nav to Fix our Position

Paul & Alan – Alan needed a jump start!

  Paul with Audrey’s Dad Joe! 

Wallis & Audrey doing Yoga on the bow! 

LUSH Parked in Las Palmas amongst the ARC yachts! 

You can follow our progress on our tracker……. http://yb.tl/lush

Only 4 weeks till we depart Southampton bound for Las Palmas in Gran Canaria!!!

We cant wait, almost all the team is assembled!

Just had the most wonderful send off party on Saturday in Ireland – there is so much good will for us and I am deeply touched that many people were saying that we are a true inspiration to them by showing them that you can achieve whatever you want by focusing on the goal and going for it!

We are truly blessed to have you in our lives and we hope you enjoy our blog! :0)

One Life…Live It!

Paul Adamson