It’s good to be here.

We arrived a week ago, our last 15 hours being a gentle chug up Puget sound having crossed the finish line just off the tip of the Olympic national park, which marks the westernmost point of the United States (if you don’t count Alaska. Or Hawaii). It would be fair to say the mood was slightly muted, Sarah’s death still very much in our minds.

One of the nicest moments was safely repatriating an exhausted collared dove that had settled on Garmin about 60 miles offshore. He had ignored all our attempts to feed him, but after a night’s rest on the A-frame at the back of the boat, and once he could see and smell the forests either side of Puget sound, he was off. We were very glad that he too had made it safely back to land.

And I had some friendly faces waiting for me, my dad and his wife having flown out to Seattle a couple of days earlier.  Thank you!

Seattle itself is a fantastic place. The city is squeezed between the waters of the Sound and those of Lakes Union and Washington, which makes for a compact city centre and everything within walking distance. It also makes for some wonderful views, looking out across the flat water to the trees and, beyond them, the snow-capped mountain ranges and the film-set cone of Mount Rainier (“ray-near”, apparently).

Garmin has taken a bit of a beating, from stem to stern, and it’s taking a while for the various parts to be repaired and returned, which has been frustrating. But we’re getting there…