The Sanoodi Servers are on the move. The site will be unavailable from around 14:00 GMT, Monday 15th February till around 18:00 when they should be comfortably ensconced in their new home.
This will also mean that we are unable to deal with e-mails during this period.
If you are using SMap and have it set to live recording, it won’t work either i.e. the route will not appear on the site.
Sorry for any inconvenience.

The Three Peaks Yacht Race is one of the world’s most famous and long established adventure races that combines yachting and mountain running (and a little bit of cycling). The race is now in its 33rd year and its sail/run format has been copied in similar races as far away Hong Kong and Tasmania. It’s starting point and spiritual home is only an hour from Sanoodi towers in Barmouth or Abermaw in Wales. This year the local team - Team Last Inn will be using SMap on a BlackBerry to record and share their progress with friends and family.

I was asked last week by the team’s captain David Bird if I wanted to go out on Saturday morning into Cardigan Bay with the crew, the runners and Huw Jenkins from BBC Wales, on a training trip aboard the 42 ft Beneteau yacht - Kilva.

I arrived at an empty and grey Barmouth Quayside at 7:45AM wondering whether it had been cancelled but by 8AM the team had arrived. Steve, the owner of Kilva, David the Skipper of Team Last Inn, Huw from the BBC, Keith one of the two runners, Martin, a local web designer, Denis, the secretary of the Three Peaks Yacht race and Jaffa, a local lad who is studying for a yachting degree in Southampton but who had decided to spend most of the previous evening at a party.

The plan was to sail up Cardigan Bay to the Lleyn Peninsula, drop anchor off Porth Ceiriad, have some lunch and then return to Barmouth. The day’s objective was to familiarise the race crew and runners with the boat, for Huw to get material for a Radio Wales programme that will follow the local team’s progress on the BBC and for me to record the route on SMap for Team Last Inn. My job was definitely the easiest, and by the time that we had left Barmouth harbour SMap was recording the route live on the Sanoodi site.

This meant that i was then free to relax, sit back and enjoy the trip, a tasty bacon sandwich, and a nice strong mug of tea, courtesy of Martin who apparently was the ship’s “galley slave”!

The trip up along the Meirionydd coast was relatively smooth, it was only when we arrived off the coast of the Lleyn Peninsula that it became clear that weather conditions were deteriorating and that the wind was picking up.

We sat in the cockpit and ate a hearty lunch of Chicken Soup, and slightly damp Cheddar and Ham Sandwiches, feeling sorry for the poor campers on the campsite above the bay as the rain came down and the wind continued to rise. After an hour or so at anchor the anchor was raised and we set sail back to Barmouth, accompanied by another nice mug of tea.

I was by this point becoming unseasonably cold and very wet, so i decided to go down below and try and dry out and warm up a bit. This seemed like a good idea until about an hour after i had lain down when i was woken albeit slightly drier and warmer by the noise of large things falling off shelves in the cabin and the sound of the wind. I tried to get out of the bunk and stand up, I fell over and almost immediately felt ill! It took another fuzzy, uncomfortable and disorienting fifteen minutes for me to escape the toilet (or head as it is referred to on board ship) get back into all the gear; Salopettes, Coat, Life jacket and harness and emerge into the cockpit.

By this time Kilva was about 16 miles from the coast of Meirionydd and sailing through storm force 7 to 8 conditions, the cockpit was significantly wetter and windier than when i had gone down below, the sea was flowing over the toe rails and when offshore gusts really blew, water was coming into the cockpit. It was clearly going to be a long, cold and exhilirating return across Cardigan Bay to Barmouth.
The crew of Kilva and the boat performed superbly in the conditions, the overriding memory for me is the numbing cold and wetness, the noise of the sea against the hull and basically feeling useless when things needed to be done. I did attempt to take photos of the return journey but the camera lens was covered in spray, i would try to clear it and then look through the viewfinder again to see nothing but spray. I was not alone though, Huw’s plans to ask David the captain of Team Last Inn a few more questions for Radio Wales had clearly been abandoned and poor Keith and Jaffa had to go below, they were not looking very well.
We finally came into Barmouth harbour after 8PM, Huw’s wife told him on the phone that a 1000 metre peaks race had been abandoned in Snowdonia that afternoon, and that many of the runners had been rescued due to the same atrocious and unexpected weather conditions. We also discovered that although we were in the harbour, it was too rough to get off the boat. The plan was to wait until the tide turned and hopefully the wind died down before disembarking. An hour later the tide had turned, but the wind blowing down the Mawddach estuary from Cadair Idris had not. It was beginning to look like we might be forced to spend the night onboard. Then in the fading light John the ferryman appeared in his 2 man dinghy. He took all 8 of us back one by one, and deserves special mention and gratitude.

It really puts the events of the day into perspective when I can honestly say that I would not normally contemplate under any circumstances prior to this adventure, getting off the side of a large yacht in the dark, in strong winds into a tiny two man inflatable dinghy that then shot/flew across the stormy harbour to the quayside. The conditions of the return journey back from Porth Ceiriad and my desperation to get back on shore and warmth meant that i did not think twice!
After a beautiful pint of Pedigree in the Last Inn pub by the harbour, the crew minus Jaffa and Huw, but with the addition of Simon the team’s second runner finally ended up in the Spice Cuisine Indian restaurant at around midnight, where warmth and spicy food finished the evening and an exciting day perfectly. I finally left Team Last Inn to drive through the mountains back home, where i arrived at 1:45AM 19hrs after leaving, still cold, still wet and very glad to be back.

Team Last Inn will be recording their progress in the three peaks yacht race which starts on the 20th of June here.

David’s team are raising money for the Royal Yacht Association’s Sailability Charity whose aim is to bring boating to people with disabilities. You can support Team Last Inn and donate online to their chosen cause here. They have a big target to go for, so please, please donate to Sailability on their Justgiving page.
I will, after this extremely adventurous day on board Kilva, be giving Team Last Inn special attention during the course of the race. Although I hope that they do not encounter weather conditions as bad as this on their journey up to Fort William in Scotland, they have demonstrated their competence in extremely poor conditions.
Thank you David, Steve, Denis, Martin, Jaffa, Huw, Keith, Simon and John the ferryman for a day (and night) to remember. Good luck in the race.

RELEASE DATE - Thursday, April 2nd 9AM GMT
Thanks to some awesome feedback on version 1.5 from Snoods around the globe. We are proud to announce the release of version 1.6 of SMap for BlackBerry.

• No more compatability mode issues for Storm users - phew!
• Current Speed as well as average speed.
• Twitter authentication and improved tweets for live routes.
• Lat Lon position data visible and ability to copy this data to the clipboard for easy texting or e-mailing of your position.

Now it is back to taming SMap for the iPhone and taking full advantage of what the latest version of OS 3 brings. We will have a new interim release for iPhone users out around Easter that’ll let you tweet and share your routes live. An announcement shall be made from the rooftops of Sanoodi towers as soon as it is available.
You can download the  latest version of SMap - 1.6 here:

From your BlackBerry go here - http://wap.sanoodi.com

From your web browser this is the place - http://www.sanoodi.com/gomobile/blackberry