We have been at sea for about four hours now. I uploaded four pictures from our departure, which can be found on the website http://www.kensblog.com/ – under the Nordhavn Rally menu item. From there, select Photos – Part I followed by Departure – May 17th, 2004 – Division One. 
Division 1 departs Fort Lauderdale
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Autumn Wind surfs down a wave
Thus far, we have no problems. Two of the boats in Division 2 have reported problems, although nothing serious. One of the boats has a broken stabilizer. They were able to disconnect one of the two stabilizers, and just run on one. One other boat has a leak in the stabilizer system, which they are watching closely. Here aboard Sans Souci, all is well. I’m having a heck of a time typing while getting slammed from side to side. Hopefully, the wind will die down at some point and I can write more. 
Our departure from the bay was a bit of a mess. We were supposed to get onto our course and then line up for picture taking. However, Sans Souci, as the lead boat, goofed in setting our course, and veered way off course to the east. Some of the boats were good soldiers and followed us deeper to sea, others stubbornly held to the previously agreed to heading. This caused a bit of anarchy as we briefly insisted that the error was theirs, and they insisted that the error was ours. We were quite embarrassed when we turned out to be the guilty party.
All of you reading this will now know “the rest of the story” when you see the pictures someday (that were taken by the helicopter) and Sans Souci is NOT in lead, as we had anticipated. Oops…. 
Helicopter hovers ahead of Sans Souci
We’ve been lucky so far – no one sick, and dinner went well. I experimented with throwing my paper plate overboard, and discovered that throwing a Frisbee shaped object loaded with food is best done downwind. Double oops… Otherwise all is well. We just had the roll call, and everyone reported in. We’re all talking to each other frequently, as it’s totally dark, and the waves are too high for the radar tp be as effective as I’d like. We had a bit of excitement during the roll call when we discovered that the single side band radio was interfering with the autopilot. None of us knows why, but the boat would make a hard turn to starboard every time that we pressed transmit on the SSB!
More later, when things calm down (hopefully!)