'Grey Out'

Today was the maritime equivalent of a skiing white out. We woke up to rain, mist, and low cloud; everything was flat and grey. The sea was flat because there wasn't any wind at all.  We were travelling from Treguier to Roscoff and as a result had to motor most of the way.

Leaving Treguier - visibility not great!

To think last Wednesday I was delivering a projected four year business plan to a Board of Directors and yet this Wednesday I had two new jobs.

Job one was Lobster Pot Spotter. No......we were not poaching lobsters for our supper.  My job was to spot them before we hit them and got the rope tangled round our propellor. There are several challenges that I had to face to be good at this job in these particular conditions. Firstly it requires good eyesight (fail one), or glasses that you can see out of i.e. not covered in rain drops (fail 2) and thirdly motivation (I did try to look enthusiastic so only partial fail 3). As luck would have it we didn't hit any so I received a commendation for my diligence!

A lobster pot near miss....

My second job was Bimini Emptier. For our non-sailing friends the Bimini is the navy blue canopy that shelters us from the elements. It is particularly useful in both wet conditions and hot sunshine. It is designed so that a person of normal height can still see ahead and steer the boat. Unfortunately I am not a person of normal height and I could not see anything unless I put my head round the corner of the shelter and got a face full of driving rain.  I only found this amusing for a few minutes of the 7 hour journey today.  There was a fleeting moment when I considered popping down below and swapping my Dubarry sailing boots for a pair of high wedges but then sense prevailed!

To aid me in emptying the rainwater off the top of the Bimini every few minutes (Life of Pi and Waterworld survival movies came to mind) we decided to play some relaxing music so I selected The Swell Season starting with 'Low Rising' in honour of the flat sea and then Tom McRae 'For the Restless' ...nothing to do with my new employment conditions I assure you. By the time we had had Tom on loop a couple of times Greg was feeling depressed, even the normally chipper blue ensign was looking a bit dejected....so we had to change to a bit of Van Morrison! 

A somewhat bedraggled ensign

Just after lunch we adopted a pet. It was a giant moth that had had quite enough of the rain and decided to hitch a lift under our cover.  I named him Drizzle.  He was still looking bleakly over the side when we approached Roscoff... I know how he felt!

Drizzle contemplating Roscoff

A lot has happened.....

Well, a lot has happened since I last posted and I haven't had much time to write - but today we are moored up in Treguier, a pretty little Brittany town, and we are planning to have a rest and stay here for the day. I therefore have time to give you a bit of a catch up, so apologies if this is a bit of a long one....

Finally we have left - and if you are planning something similar I should warn you that the last few days are the most difficult. It was really stressful..... and the toughest part wasn't leaving our home of 14 years; re-housing the children or the cat, it was getting rid of the possessions we had accumulated over the past 30 years. We ended up getting a 16 yard skip (which is huge - as big as a fair-sized room!!) and we filled it to overflowing. Jan alluded in her post to the "discussions" we had on this subject so I won't bore you with any more details. Suffice to say I am pleasantly surprised that we are actually together here on the boat rather than glaring at one another from opposite sides of the divorce court!

We left Port Solent very early on Saturday morning and the first nervous moment occurred within minutes. The tide was low (and ebbing) and 25 metres from the marina our depth was showing as zero. If we had run aground at that point we would have had to wait an hour for the tide to fall, then another hour (at least) for the tide to rise again to the level at which we could get down the river. Not a very auspicious start to our adventure. Well we motored forward very slowly,.. and although we slowed a little at one point as the keel grazed the mud, we made it (and I surreptitiously breathed a sigh of relief). 

Leaving Portsmouth

We were heading South across The Channel to Cherbourg and as is usual when sailing.....the wind was coming from precisely where we wanted to go. We really just wanted to get there so the purist in me took a back seat and we took the pragmatic decision, we gave up on the idea of sailing and cranked up the motor. The passage took 12 hours with no problems other than that I lost our good bucket overboard. I was trying to get some salt water to wash down the decks - its good for the teak and will kill the mould that has accumulated over the winter months. Unfortunately the bucket lanyard wasn't tied on securely (not one of my knots I am sure) so we motored on whilst the bucket quickly and quietly sank to a watery grave.

Entering Cherbourg

In Cherbourg as a reward for finally leaving we treated ourselves to supper at one of our favourite restaurants Le Pily. If you are ever in Cherbourg I would strongly recommend that you visit. They have 1 Michelin Star; the food is exceptional and compared with England it is very reasonably priced.

From Cherbourg we were going to St. Helier in Jersey and once again the wind was bang on the nose,... so once again we were motoring. I was a bit nervous because we had to pass through the Alderney Race and conditions there can be pretty ugly. 

Cap de la Hague

The tide runs at up to 7 knots round Cap de la Hague (and we can only motor at 7 knots) so if you get the timing wrong and you are motoring against the tide you are stuck there for quite a while. On the other hand, if you go with the tide but the wind is against the tide then the overfalls and waves that develop are vicious - you have to pass through at slack water.

We met some quite steep waves when we first entered the race and I was beginning to get a bit concerned, but as my tide tables predicted the tide slackened and the wave height decreased. Phew, breathe another sigh of relief!  

From St. Helier we left the following morning for Treguier, a pretty town in Brittany. Fortunately the wind was kind to us and we could sail most of the way.

We arrived after an uneventful passage and found another nice restaurant for supper. Le 5 was amazing value, with an excellent 3 course meal for E30! 

The best terrine de foie gras I have ever eaten!

We are spending the day here in Treguire, doing boat chores; sending e-mails and chilling. 

Tomorrow we are off to Roscoff....

Final madness.....

Well this is the first time I am posting on the blog and I am pleased to say that I can report that Greg and I have not had a single cross word or row during the 12 hour crossing from Port Solent to Cherbourg. 

Why is this worthy of comment I hear you asking? Well the truth is, we have been rowing at an extreme level for the past month. The stress of dismantling my nest of 30 years, battling with Greg's desire to just go (he ordered a 16 yard skip and was very gung ho about its contents!) I have been clinging to my memories and memorabilia like a limpet on a rock. The final day before we set off was epic. Today in the calm and relaxing atmosphere of the waves, the sea and the sky I found myself reflecting on what actually transpired.

There are some of you who will be receiving weird parcels on Monday. Jenny Cowell you will receive a parcel that looks like a leg of lamb wrapped in a black bin liner. It is actually a bundle of leather remnants and two pairs of lederhosen from our Austrian phase. Why have you received them... because you told me you were planning to make animals from leather ( and I believed you!) and you told me how to clean suede but I forgot the instructions so I've sent them to you for restoration. Sue Johne will have received a belated birthday present. Abi Veevers will have received two books, in separate envelopes with no message but only because they got left behind from the charity shop run and I couldn't bear for them to go on the skip. We only had small envelopes left as Greg had already thrown the whole of the office filing cabinet on the skip. Chris Scott I returned that book you loaned to me 12 years ago. 

And then in the midst of the chaos of packing I made Greg go to the post office with all of this stuff. Actually I'm amazed that didn't create a bigger row. 

My blood pressure did however rise off the scale when the new tenant Alan pitched up in the hope of finding some calm because he was rowing with his wife at their end of things. Alan and Greg then proceeded to compare notes on the unreasonableness of their partners packing and retention habits... when I saw them doing a high five and man hug I went ballistic! So leaving my lovely Thicket Meadows was extremely traumatic. I have had several wobbly and tearful moments of sadness, anger and now joy. As we were crossing the channel today, the sun was out and all of the stress behind us; Lou Reed came on the playlist singing Perfect Day and I cried with happiness. It has been traumatic and doubt filled but now we are actually off...I know its right for both of us at this point in our lives.

Packing my paramotor

I fly a paramotor - a paraglider with a motor; and Jan and I have had some long "discussions" about it and whether it has a place on board Viridian.

Obviously I want to take it; unfortunately Jan is somewhat less enthusiastic. I don't think the problem is that she is worried about whether I crash and hurt myself, it's more that it takes up some space that could more usefully be allocated to something (anything) else.

I think it will be wonderful to fly around some of the places that we visit, here is a video of a recent flight by the river. 

Anyway we have finally agreed that I can dismantle it and store it in the front cabin whilst we are alone on the boat. Here is some time-lapse footage of me breaking down the paramotor - as you can see it ends up quite small

When we have guests on board I will find somewhere ashore to store it. I thought that was a pretty good compromise.

Anyway, although it must be said that I have had one or two mishaps as I have been learning to fly, I am now getting a bit more proficient and a bit more confident - so you can look forward to some video footage from the air.

Getting rid of stuff is hard!

Since we now have a departure date we have started to try and get rid of some of our stuff, but I must warn you that it is hard,...very hard. 

At the moment we live (and have lived for 14 years) in a 4 bedroomed house. Over these years we have accumulated what now seems like a huge amount of stuff, but we are about to move to a smallish boat so there is a vast amount of our belongings that simply won't fit. What do we do with it?

Storage is horribly expensive - i was shocked. You will find that for most furniture if you are travelling for more than a couple of years, then the storage cost will be more than the cost to replace the item with new. We have tried to find friends who have the space to look after our more precious or valuable items, but what to do with the rest?

Well we have no time left (we are leaving next week) so we have decided to give everything away or throw it away. We have laid all our things out and our friends have been invited round to take what they want tomorrow - after that everything goes on the skip. It's a stressful experience because whilst its quite cathartic to get rid of redundant rubbish, its quite traumatic to throw away things that you like and you think are valuable but you have no room to store. 

Jan and I have already almost come to blows about what is worth storing and what should be thrown, no doubt there will be more serious discussion later on in the night. We will get there.....  

2 weeks to go......

Lots has happened since I last posted - and unusually pretty much everything has been good news! 

Firstly the tenants for our house rental have now been confirmed, the contract has been signed and the moving date has been set. They will be moving in on 13th May, so that is the day we will be moving out and setting sail - two weeks from today. Starting to get really excited now......

Next, my daughter Miranda has found a flat in Clapham, South London and moved there yesterday with two of her friends. That is really handy because it means we can move some of our furniture into her flat rather than putting it into storage. I have discovered that storage is shockingly expensive and bearing in mind we are planning on travelling for several years we were debating whether it was worthwhile storing stuff whilst we were away. We had come to the conclusion that for most of our furniture the storage cost would have been well over the replacement cost but this means that we don't have to get rid of it all. 

Another benefit of Miranda's move is that her new landlord is happy for her to take our cat, Suki. What to do with Suki has been a bit of a worry to us - we have had her since she was a kitten, she is now 14 and we are very fond of her. We had discussed taking her with us on the boat - I know that many ships have a ship's cat, but it would have added an extra layer of complication whenever we wished to leave the boat to return to the UK or go exploring so wouldn't have been ideal. This problem has now been resolved.

Next bit of good news....I have fixed the air-conditioning on the boat!! As you will learn, my DIY skills are appalling and the prospect of any maintenance work on the boat fills me with dread. Generally what happens is, I start a job; muck it up comprehensively; and then have to pay a professional to come and remedy the mess I have created and do the job properly. Our air-conditioning system had stopped working because there was an airlock in the pipe for the coolant water so the pump wouldn't prime. After chatting about the problem with various professionals they suggested that I fit a connection to the coolant water pipe from my fresh-water system so I could use this to prime the pump. This sounded like a bit of an unwieldy (and expensive solution) to me so I thought I would try to fix it myself. I decided to try to prime the pump by blasting water from the dockside hose through the water output fitting. It wasn't simple because of course the dockside hose and the water output tube were incompatible sizes, but I managed to manufacture a connection using a cut-off bit of biro. I made the connection, turned on the hose, and to my surprise I saw air bubbles rising from under the boat - it had worked! Problem solved, cost zero, happy days! 

Final bit of good news, I have finished adding guardrail netting to the boat. Jan and I have discussed and planned man overboard recovery should the worst happen - and we have come the conclusion that MOB recovery would be really difficult to do single-handed. Our genoa is so large that furling it on your own would be a mission in any sort of a breeze (and that is generally when MOB situations occur). Trying to furl the genoa whilst keeping an eye on the whereabouts of the casualty in a choppy sea would be pretty much impossible. How to resolve this problem? Don't fall overboard! So I have now added guardrail netting round the boat. It was a long and tedious process but now moving around the deck feels much safer and the netting doesn't look nearly as bad as I expected it to.....       

Good news!.....

We have just heard from the Estate Agents that they have received an offer to rent our house. Hopefully this will go through as planned and if it does so then we hope to be departing on 13th May. Fingers crossed!!

Other good news,.....the bodge repair that I made to the leak has worked. I am surprised, because my DIY work is not usually successful but so far so good.