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Two great days and now one of “those” days. I logged into the positioning website this morning to get my “fix” (pun intended) only to find Dignity had only made 7nm, as the crow flies, in the last 24 hours. As soon as I could I was on the phone to the dealer.

So I now hear the plan was to test Dignity on the move and that the stop was scheduled to communicate progress to Lagoon. This contradicts the story I was first told – ie Dignity was on her way with only one stop in the Canaries planned. I did point out the discrepancy between expectations set and reality didn’t give comfort but at the end of the day I have to just realize this industry does not enjoy the level of professional maturity that is required to pass information around accurately. If you’ve been following this blog then this is no surprise.

Oh. I did get an apology that the expectations set that she would leave on Sunday weren’t met and that she actually left port early Tuesday morning. How to read this piece of news I wonder. If I take this at face value this is very interesting news. I know that by 14:22GMT on Tuesday she was about 165nm minimum sailing distance from where she was berthed in Santander. If I do my Time Zone / Summer time math right (I’m terrible at this), if she left just after midnight Tuesday morning she had 16 hours to make 165nm. That’s a stonking 10knots average.

I hope you can all forgive me for biting my lip on this one and waiting to see if this can be repeated under circumstances where I have confidence in the measurements and information I am being provided.

Current best ETA to BVI is now July 1^st.

Dare we hope? Another day covering 152nm. It may be more than this but I really don’t know what path she followed as she went round the NW corner of Spain.

This is exactly the pace we need. But that’s all it is. We’re not exceeding the pace and that means any bad days will cost us. Still – each day passed at this pace is one day less that can go wrong. Too early to uncross fingers. Any of them. Nor toes.

Finally a day which raised no questions. Dignity was able to put in 155nm (as the crow flies) today. If (if, if, if) she can keep this up until she arrives in the BVIs then she’ll be there on the 30^th of this month.

Today I indirectly heard from the owner of hull #23. He’s very pleased with his boat and suffered no difficulties around delivery. He’s going to be spending the year cruising the med with his family. I was pleased to hear the good news.

Ok – so she’s finally off on her way again. When I received the uplink she had only traveled about 10nm but that’s a lot more than she’s been doing recently. Now it’s down to watching progress and start projecting ETAs.

A little frustrating today. At 8am I was pounding the refresh button on the satellite tracking website hoping to get confirmation that Dignity really was on her way. Most days, the uplink is near on 24 hours after the previous. Not today. So now it’s 10:23 and still no idea if she’s left or not.

The absolute best time it would take to get to the BVIs is 7 days to Las Palmas in the Canary Islands and then another 18 days to cross the Atlantic to the BVIs. If we’re really luck, that means Dignity will be ready for us on June 30^th. So it’s going to be an interesting time watching her progress and trying to translate this into a realistic ETA.

The ETA factors into our contingency plans which we’ve been putting some thought into. As we arrive in the BVIs on June 22^nd (six weeks after Dignity was originally due to arrive) she definitely won’t be there when we arrive. If she’s up to 7-8 days late, we’ll stay on Tortola, pack in some Scuba Diving, see some friends and do some chilling. Over 8 days we’ll look to exchange one of Dignity’s future weeks with another boat so we can be sure to get some sailing in. We’d do this the first week and then take it from there.

… later …

So I just checked again and the news is not encouraging. Dignity has not moved from Spain. Rats.

Just called the dealer. They seem to think they’re now planning on departure tomorrow.