3 minute read
AROUNDTHE UK SAILING
– sailing at weekends or using annual leave, and working remotely Monday to Friday. Bearing in mind we are much slower than a car (averaging 7 mph with good wind), this was a big ask to complete large distances at weekends whatever the weather – but we were up for the challenge!
From 1st May 2021 to October 2021, we sailed from Chatham up the east coast of England, through the Caledonian canal in Scotland from Inverness to Fort William and got out as far as the archipelago of St Kilda. This is a tiny set of islands 60nm off the Outer Hebrides out in the Atlantic ocean; it’s remote location made this passage particularly nerve wracking, knowing that after 8 hours of sailing we can only anchor and will have to deal with whatever conditions confront us. We feel so lucky to have seen this amazing place, whose last inhabitants left their homes intact in 1930 … walking along their village road was eerie, imaging what life might have been like on an island this remote. We loved the Hebrides and explored many of the islands, and eventually made our way to Whitehaven in the Lake District for the winter months. Our employers were glad to have us back in London for the winter despite working from home restrictions still being enforced, but we did joke on Teams calls that our EE hotspot coverage had been better in the remotest parts of Scotland, than our Wifi at home in London. We were told that the EE network is used for the emergency services around the west coast of Scotland, hence crystal clear Teams videos for the win!
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In May 2022 the trip resumed; first back to the island of Islay in Scotland for the whisky festival (a must!) and then Rathlin island off of Northern Ireland. We’d learnt our lessons from the previous year, that sailing all weekend, working all week and moving again the following weekend, meant we weren’t seeing much of the locations we were moored at. So we both took career breaks from July 2022 to October 2022 to ensure we could complete the circumnavigation this year, and get all the way back to Falmouth. We made the most of it and visited the Isle of Man, Liverpool .. through the Menai Straits of Angelsey to… Abersoch, Skomer island, Dale (Milford Haven), Lundy island, Padstow, the Isles of Scilly (where we spent 2 glorious weeks in the
August heatwave), Fowey, Newton Ferrers, Jersey, Guernsey, Dartmouth, Studland Bay and finally back to Chichester where we left JJT for the winter.
Some of the passages this year really pushed us out of our comfort zone – in particular getting to Jersey from Newton Ferrers which was 18 hours in strong winds. When there’s only 2 of you on board, there aren’t any breaks especially during the night, so the mental challenge of keeping concentration and fighting your body’s fatigue is always the toughest part! And with sailing, when you get to your destination in need of relaxation a boat is unforgiving ... everything on our yacht is manual: we pump the toilets, we only have “proper power” (i.e., kettle) when in a marina, and when it blows a gale, even when tied up, the boat heels over, which can make things howl and roll about inside! So getting some beauty sleep isn’t always straightforward.
One of the scariest moments we’ve had was actually as we were coming into Brixham in July 2020. In the swell as Lucy went forward to the mast to stow the mainsail she lost her balance and fell towards the outside of the boat. As Lucy grabbed for the guardrail, it detached itself from the stanchion and left nothing but about 3 foot of space between her and the water which would have been about 15 degrees. Fortunately she took another step and regained balance and didn’t end up in the waves which were about 2m tall. At the end of the 2020 season, we took the lifejackets we had bought at the beginning of the year to be serviced only to find that Lucy’s lifejacket was not the real deal and was the display model from the manikin in the shop. This revelation added even more to the event outside Brixham harbour as she wouldn’t have had a lifejacket to keep her out of the water if she had gone in! Preparation is the key to plain sailing, and we haven’t had any mishaps in the 3000+ nautical miles we sailed in 2021 and 2022.
Over winter 2022/3 we will be cracking on with the boat maintenance and planning trips for 2023. We really loved the Isles of Scilly, Dartmouth and Newton Ferrers so we might venture back that way in the summer of 2023, but we also have bigger dreams of sailing further afield, maybe even over to the Caribbean at some stage….watch this space!
When there’s only 2 of you on board, there aren’t any breaks especially during the night, so the mental challenge of keeping concentration and fighting your body’ fatigue is always the toughest part!
