Australian Rob Green's X-562 is fresh out of its wrappers. Follow the team as they head across the Atlantic on the first part of their long trip home to Sydney. Here's their first report
Australian Rob Green took delivery of his new X-562 X To Sea just six weeks ago in St Tropez but she seems all ready for her first Atlantic crossing, just the first part of one long delivery trip home to Sydney. The almost all Ozzie crew of eight (there’s one American) is a mixed bunch: there’s Rob’s son Travis, navigator and radio man Roger Smith, Rob Drury who’s raced from Melbourne to Osaka, Australian X Yachts agent Andrew Parkes, ‘honorary Aussie’ Anita McKinley and Marie Gunderson-Briggs who will be in command of what promises to be a real gourmet’s galley.
Television producer and sailing journo Traci Ayris will be sending us daily despatches as they eat up the miles across to St Lucia.
X To Sea is a quick boat but skipper Rob explained she’s loaded with cruising gear and needs a bit of a blow to get going. Still, he’s contemplating sampling some racing in the Caribbean before the team make their way through the Panama Canal into the Pacific and a long amble home.
First report
With the rugby world cup final playing on ESPN at 0900 in Gran Canaria this morning, we were all roused from our bunks by the skipper at 0715 – it was important to beat the pommies to Cafe Bodega in order to get the bes seats!
As we took the shortcut across the sandy beach some of us suffering the effects of a rather large party that had finished only hours earlier were questioning our sanity in heading out to another bar!
We won’t dwell on the result….. we were gracious in defeat….. it was a great game after all!
As luck (or fate?) would have it, Pontoon 18 has turned out to be a party pontoon. Two transoms down from X To Sea is the Danish Beneteau, Herdis. In the spirit of cementing international relations a bottle of tequila was presented to her crew with the firm promise that we’d empty the bottle in St Lucia.
The remainder of today was spent in washing vegetables and carrying out final preparations. The sun was shining and the pontoons were abuzz with expectation and activity.
Now the food is all stowed (X-To Sea is sitting considerably lower in the water now), the RIB is packed up and El Capitan Rob has a grin from ear to ear now that all those damned forms are filled in! We are all eager to get underway and test our beautiful boat….. all we need are those fair winds!