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Peter and Matthewtrying to work out whichhemisphere we are infrom the stars - twominutes later they gaveup and looked at theelectronic chart!"It was exhilaratingyet boring, relaxingyet tiring, seat-of-thepantsyet predictableand a whole lot more"Oyster 56 owner, Mark Blythe,on his first Atlantic crossing'First timers on the high seas -The check-in lady took one lookat the box with corrosivesticker stuck all over it andour problems started. Just in caseyou weren’t aware, and I certainlywas not, mercury eats aluminiumand, as the bulk of a Boeing 737is aluminium, we had to leave ourcalibrated thermometers behindin Luton!Skipper Matthew Watters withowner Mark BlytheWhat, I hear you asking, has this got to dowith sailing? Peter Cockcroft, a weatherforecaster from the BBC, was one of the crew forLuskentyre’s first Atlantic crossing. Peter had arranged with the Met Officeand Southampton University’s Department of Hydrography to carry outobservations and readings throughout our passage. This would, we hoped,give us something to do as we cruised across the Atlantic. Fortunately ourloss of the thermometers did not put paid to the readings as were able touse the instruments on board.We were due to leave Las Palmas about a week before the ARC, becauseLuskentyre, our new Oyster 56, was going to appear at the Nicholson CharterBoat Show in Antigua at the beginning of December. Matthew, my skipper,had had a cracking sail down from Gibraltar with guests and had spent a ratherbumpy week at anchor, waiting for us to arrive, just outside the marina in LasPalmas. A point worth remembering, Las Palmas is not the world’s mostbeautiful place at the best of times, and Las Palmas in November is like theM25 in rush hour when it comes to boats. If you are not an ARC boat you canforget coming alongside.32 www.oystermarine.com