Hello Friends,
After many months of preparation, today is the day that we finally depart Portland, Maine for Lorient France. We are headed to Lorient for the Prologue Race from Lorient to Tangier Morocco, for the start of the Globe40 around the world race. This is a 3,000+ mile trip across the North Atlantic in May just to get to the starting line, which is sure to be a bit chilly with water temps still in the 40's. We have been preparing GryphonSolo2 for months and now it is time to take her to sea. The enormity of this endeavor has washed over me these last few days as I have said goodbye to my kids and my home for a 10-month journey around the world. I am hoping that many of you might come visit us at one of the stopover ports, so please check out this PDF file with the places and dates. If you want to follow us on our trans-Atlantic voyage, go here: https://my.yb.tl/gryphonsolo2, to access the YB Tracker that will be transmitting our position from the boat every 6 hours.
Also, if you want to get in the mood for the round-the-world race a bit more, get yourself some cool GS2 gear, go to the GS2 online store at: https://www.team1newport.com/Gryphon-Solo-2-Club-Store/products/1347. So many thanks to friends and family that have offered good wishes on this long journey - I really appreciate it. I will be in touch from offshore once we get settled in a bit and feel free to respond to this email and it will find its way to me.
Cheers,
Joe
Joe & Roger departing Portland this afternoon:
