June 4, 2019
Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines
After the ghoulish curiosity for questions about storms and pirates abates, people are always interested in our engine. And it’s often with a tone of [...]
November 20, 2013
Role play
A few years ago James and I were walking along the cliffs of a Cornish seaside town and I glanced out to sea at a sailboat on the horizon. “We could just buy a boat and sail round the world”. That sentence changed everything. He quite rightly…
June 13, 2013
To Motor or not to Motor, that is the question
You are off the Pacific coast of Nicaragua. The moon is setting. It’s five in the morning the wind is 9 knots from the North West and you have plotted your latest position on the paper chart on the nav-table. You have travelled only seven miles…
March 22, 2013
The Pleasures of Passage Making
A frigate bird wheels overhead as the hazy dawn light is mirrored back by the water. The sea is absolutely still, more like a lake than an ocean, blurring the horizon so that the sky bleeds into the water. Slowly, gently, a large, old leatherback…
December 1, 2011
James and the Art of Adamastor Maintenance
We had always planned that our time in Gibraltar would be a time of prepping the boat for the big Atlantic crossing. Much though we would love to fill our days tripping merrily up to the rock to commune with the monkeys we have some serious work to…
November 22, 2011
Pedra Amareta, Punta Umbria, Chipiona and Puerto de Conil
The trip upriver was lovely but we had an ulterior motive in going. We had lost the wind. Our experience of this side of Portugal and Spain (the Algarve and the Costa de la Luz) has been very all or nothing in terms of wind and weather. Normally, if…
October 16, 2011
The Big Bad Bay of Biscuit (as it is it fondly known)
So, an update was promised and here it is. After the shaky false start of Friday the 7th we were finally able to set off from Mylor the next day with a repaired alternator and a bruised wallet. We had a great sail across the Channel (no fog this…
October 7, 2011
A False Start…
So, the day has finally come, when we run round like headless chickens trying to get everything made ready for the big off. Let's get that liferaft properly fitted to the stern, we need five 20l jerry cans of fuel, quick - Sainsburys is closing and…