Weekend #1 of our final period of work came and went in a bit of a soggy flash. Lauren made a huge dent in sorting through our food stores and we did another big shop of cans, pasta and rice to begin building our long term stores. Grant's also been making great progress fitting the final bits of wood trim so that left me to get the fore deck and wheelhouse painted.

This is England though, and I should have known better. All was going well to start with and I managed to get all the taping done and the first coat of paint down.

The weather was even playing ball and we had an amazing corona rainbow show itself early on the Saturday morning.

Then the rain and wind hit. 40kts and driving drizzle meant all work outside effectively stopped. I still managed to fit some protectors to the stainless angle I've used for the kayak supports and also get some cleats fitted to the swim platform, but the remainder of the weekend was spent indoors, looking for jobs to do. Honestly, I hate this weather.

Still, anything is better than being back at our old rubbish boat yard and at least we don't dry out here. 

This coming weekend is 5 days long thanks to Easter, so the plan is to get the last of the painting done (deck and handrails), prep the rig for being lowered next week, paint the bilges and get all the 6mm shrouds made up (the 8mm shrouds will get done once the rig is lowered). We're still set to haul out on the 10th April as well so everything is still on track - it'd just be great if the weather played ball and allowed us to finish the work off.

49 days to go....

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So... this past weekend we moved from the hell hole of a yard we've been stuck in for the past 4.5 years (see muddy low water photos below), to a new, clean, sparkling, nice place to do our last 2 months worth of work. This is how the old marina looked at low tide....

And this is the long pontoon I've walked down just about every weekend for 3 years.... I can't tell you how big the grin on my face was the last time I walked down this.

I had a few bits and pieces to do on the Friday before we dropped off the car at the new marina, took a cab back to the current yard, packed everything aboard then set off.

The plan was to head over to Cowes for a night but with the wind perking up a bit, a whole lot of stuff on deck and a US Navy aircraft carrier due in the Solent on the Sunday (and all the exclusion zones, etc etc), we motored up to the waiting pontoon in the middle of the Channel to sit tight for the remainder of the day.

Sunday morning dawned and it was time to move into our new marina. I'm pleased to report our solar panels and wind gen did just fine keeping pace with our power usage as well....

Anyway, after a relatively quick motor and holding our breaths over the entrance sill, we got in around lunchtime, tied up, and put the kettle on.

Oh, and I saw this on the way back. It's a DB5 with "Bond J" as plates. Awesome.

So that's it for this week. I have a mate working on the boat for three weeks and I'll be down on the weekends to get the painting done, etc then it'll be time for the final haul out and finish. Still looking good for May 19....

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Holy sh*t - two months to go today. Can you believe it? I sure can't. I've had a countdown going on our white board at the flat since it was 90-odd weeks to go, and now we're just 2 months away from departure.

This is the big weekend coming up - our move weekend. I have a mate coming up from Cornwall to help this weekend (and also to get some work done on the boat over the coming month) so we're hoping for a run to Cowes on Saturday, fuel up, then back to Chichester Harbour for a night on the hook, before motoring in to the new marina at lunchtime on Monday.

The new marina have also said they might not be able to haul us out straight away, so I've re-jigged our final "to-do" lists so we're still on track for a May 19 departure. For those interested, here's what's left to do:

- Paint deck, wheelhouse, railings and bootstripe
- 4 coats of anti-foul
- Re-do the standing rigging and fit mast steps
- Move the wheelhouse helm (steering) to the aft deck and sort out the stiff rudder
- Fit rope cutters, new anodes,
- Fix the anchor and steaming lights
- Fit 6 new house batteries
- Have a big ol' clean out and clean up of everything

It seems like a big list, but it's really not. A lot of the jobs are quite easy and I think it's an indication of the amount of work we've done so far, that the above list seems like nothing.

Anyway, the clock is now really starting to tick. Update to follow.

n

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Having had one of those great days in the office with my American colleagues, where I was yet again questioning the sanity of leaving a six figure City job to live a frugal life sailing around the world, all it took was 26 pages in this month's Yachting World to make me realise how much I can't wait to leave this place.

In the course of those 26 pages, the magazine bemoaned the disappearance of astro navigation and lavished praise on the ridiculous twat-and-pomp-fest that is the Royal Yacht Squadron - bear in mind this is the same publication that has continuously questioned the safety of GPS and electronic flares, and whose editor appeared at a well-attended Bluewater Cruising Seminar and had the cheek to tell everyone to "be careful of younger crew, as they're likely to fall asleep on watch". When I say everyone, I mean a room full of geriatrics who would struggle to go through an average night without having to empty their colostomy bags umpteen times.

The great British empire is over, yet they cling on to their once brilliant/now pitiful military, appalling weather (seasons? ha!) and the past that is well, that past. Astro navigation is outdated, GPS is the future (the world accepts it, so why can't the British?), any form of progress in leisure boating, and if I have to deal with one more "I'm off shooting / yachting / etc this weekend" twat, I'll break his red trouser wearing legs.

Yes, I have made some amazing friends in my time here but after eleven long years, we're leaving in 9.5 weeks and I, for one, couldn't be happier.

/off to the boat tomorrow to continue preparing it for our trip....

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I'm not normally one to recommend books, but do yourself a favour and read this one. Two Swedish guys buy a boat (with minimal sailing experience), learn to sail, and sail around the world. Kinda like the Bumfuzzles, with less pizza.

http://www.braveorstupid.com/

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With 3 weekends to go, we were hoping to get the paint done before haul out to make life easier. As luck would have it, the weather got sunny, the wind dropped and came from the SW, and the tides were just right.

Portholes taped and ready to go:

Coat #1 done.

Coat #1 (this time in the afternoon sun)

And coat #2 done. To be honest, I was really worried about rolling on the paint again as it turned out very streaky and crap last time. This time however, I started rolling at 07:00 (before the wind piped up and the sun came out), used 10% of the correct thinners and taped a 9" roller to a book hook, allowing me to do paint runs the height of the hull. Voila! A decent finish. It's not glassy smooth like a production yacht, but I'm happy with it.. which is the first time I've been happy with the colour of the boat (after it was white, black, grey, light blue, dark blue, and now this blue).

With the painting done, I was keen to get a hatch installed on the foredeck so we could use the anchor locker to also store our fenders.

With blue water sailing, the less holes in the deck, the better. I fitted the stainless pipe (you can see just in front of the windlass) as the new drop for the chain and will fill in the other one (which you can see at the base of the windlass).

New foredeck configuration.

The dinghy's also been leaking since we shortened it, so I got to work filling the busted / leaking rivets.

Last but not least, the new steering is going to end up going on ebay. I was testing it last weekend and managed to snap the chain as it couldn't overpower the existing internal steering. The idea is to now move the internal heavy duty steering onto the aft deck, and sell all that stuff I bought at the back end of last year and only just finishing installing. Aargh.

So there we have it folks.... 2 weeks 'til haulout and we've effectively done everything we had to do before hauling. I've cleaned the forward cabin and sold off a lot of our spare anti-foul paint, 12V fans, etc etc and also went over to the new marina on Saturday eve to check out the layout.

I had to deal with more morons this week when selling stuff as well - because I wouldn't accept one fellow's offer, he decided to act like a petulant child and I ended up pulling the ads and just leaving it on ebay... Honestly, I just don't get some people.

Anyway, enough of that. Next weekend I'm going to do a few last bits & bobs (lock nuts on the engine controls, fitting a new solar panel controller, tweaking a couple of bits here & there) then it's the final countdown 'til we leave...

10 weeks 'til departure.

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First up my apologies dear readers, I hadn't realised it was 3 weeks since the last update! How time flies.

Right, what's been happening recently. I spent a cold (minus 25) week out in the US for work and was surprised at how warm the UK was when I returned. This is good news for the next job I have to do on the boat - painting the topsides. In the end I decided to go with that the original blue I painted the boat in back in 2013. Anyways, paint ordered (and delivered), all imperfections in the topsides filled and faired, and now it's just a case of waiting for a sunny day with minimal wind. That's looking to be the next two weekends, which is great given we're moving marinas in three weeks.

Yep, that's right - just three weekends and we're leaving the miserable boatyard we've been in for the past 4.5 years. I'm hoping we can get a sail in on the weekend we leave, refuel the boat and get a BBQ going on the Sunday before we haul out on the Monday.

What else... the job lists continues to shrink. I finally got around to fitting the extra sheaves for the aft steering, only to find the steering doesn't seem to have enough grunt to move the rudder and the chain snapped in protest. Great. So... I'm likely going to pull the lot out this weekend and when we haul out, move the wheelhouse steering out to the aft deck. Risky plan with 2 3/4 months to go? Indeed. But we ran the work list and figures last night and I'm confident I could smash it out in a weekend, and we know the system works.

So what does that leave to do? Paint the topsides over the next two weekends, haul out, re-do the rig, paint the deck and anti-foul, and fit a few odds & ends.

Oh yeh (and stop me if I've mentioned this before), Lauren found a photo of me from the last Round the Island Race, helming Rob's boat Arrow (that'd be me pointing, probably at someone about to t-bone us):

76 days to go.
 

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