I'm sure you've all heard the events of the past few weeks but in no particular order, Portugal won the UEFA Euro 16, Australia finally elected a new Prime Minister, there have been various attacks all across Europe, and the UK decided to leave the EU.

Without underselling the other events, the UK's exit vote has caused considerable uncertainty within the UK and has effectively caused us to rethink our travel plans. Will the GBP rebound as a strong currency? Will UK passport holders still be able to travel visa free throughout Europe? Will UK boats be able to stay within the EU? Effectively, it lead us to decide now is a good time to bring Calypso back to the UK and sit tight to see what happens next.

With that in mind, I booked a Thursday night ticket to Lisbon, flew down to catch up with our delivery crew and also catch some summer sunshine. Lisbon was a completely different city to the one I visited in Feb... temps hovered in the mid-high 30s, cafes and shops were open and full to bursting, and the tourists were everywhere... I spent the couple of days prepping Calypso for the trip - filling the tanks, running up the engines, checking the spares, drinking beer, enjoying the sunshine, etc etc. With all that done and a quick test sail completed, it was time to hand over the keys. For me, this is when reality set in and I realised how hard this was going to be - having laboured over the boat for the past 6 years and every mile sailed with me on board, trusting someone else with the responsibility of bringing the boat back in one piece was not an easy thing to do.

Well, that's it for the moment.... Calypso is UK bound with the delivery crew and all going to plan, we'll be able to haul out in Chichester Harbour in a few week's time and work out what to do next....

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Another month in 2016 ticks by and not a lot of progress really... we're still waiting on good weather to get Calypso back to the UK / on the market, and the catamaran that we were interested in has been removed from the market for the time being. The cat owner has invited us down to Portugal though to test sail her at some point, then we can start the discussions on when we can take ownership....

What else... not a lot really. I forgot how much it rains in the summer in the UK (a lot), work is ticking along nicely and putting ££ back in the cruising kitty, and I'm keeping myself amused with motorbikes and planning trips..

All for now.

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Geez.... how time flies. A month ago, we were still job hunting, still catamaran hunting, and still freezing our butts off in one of the latest UK winters for a long time.

Skip forward to early May - Lauren and I are both back at work, we've pretty much settled on a catamaran, and the weather is *finally* warming up. There's even talk of 26C this weekend. Crazy, I know.

I won't go into the work side of things too much, but needless to say we're back on track for setting off again in the not-too-distant future.

As for the catamaran, we decided to give that utterly annoying broker one last chance. We made a very low offer on that Lerouge at HIYC (where I built Calypso) too which the broker never got back to us... two weeks later, he pops up again advising the seller will take slightly more than we'd offered. I tell you, the man has zero business skills. We passed on that as we'd since been down to Plymouth and made an offer on a 42ft custom cat. That first offer was knocked back, as was our second, but we've been advised our third offer (yet to be made) will be accepted..... The big difference for the Plymouth boat is the broker is amazing - very helpful, always gets back to us, and is willing to work with us to make the deal happen.

We've also decided to keep the catamaran at HIYC again; it's not my first (or second. Or third) choice but at 7.4m beam, we're quite limited on where we can get into. Price-wise we're up for a 50% premium courtesy of the increased beam (even though we'll likely be residing in the same spot we were with Calypso) but hey ho, it'll be great to have a boat back on the south coast and start prepping for another trip.

On that note, where to next? Well, we've got a lot of sailing to do this year on friends' boats, plus the Plymouth cat will require a bit of work before we can really start using her (windows resealed and a re-rig). Calypso is also due back in mid-June / early-July and I have a couple of week's work planned before we sell her, where I need to move all the cruiser bits (watermaker, SSB, etc) across to the cat. Once all that's done though, we'll get a few test weekends in to get the rig and ourselves dialled in, then maybe a round the Isle of Wight trip before we attempt a cross channel as the year closes out. That timeline's all up for debate though and we'll see how 2016 progresses....

Anyway, all for now. Updates to follow....

n

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Hey folks,

So it's been six weeks since I wrote last.... and boy a lot's changed. Here's a brief update.

We first up thought we'd only be coming back for the summer, so left Calypso in a ready-to-go state for our Atlantic crossing later this year. Well, one thing led to another and a seed of thought that's slowly been growing in my mind really took hold one rainy London evening, as I sat surfing the night. Maybe now was a great time to change to a catamaran. I mean, I've had Calypso for 5.5 years (longer than any car I've ever owned) and frankly, the fun has just gone. It's time for a change.

Fast forward a whole lot of trawling internet ads later, and we had a short list.... right down the road from Emsworth (where we re-fitted Calypso). Down we went one weekend and had a look at three boats, a Prout Escale, a Dazcat 12m, and a Solaris Sunstream. All good boats on paper, all terrible in the flesh. The broker (who will remain nameless at this point) had the boats listed in all their glory, but frankly they'd been left to rot for a few years and now needed a good £30k pumped into them, on top of their already inflated prices. Here's an example - the first two pics are from the Dazcat brokerage advert, the last pic is what we found, after the Dazcat had been left to rot for a couple of years....

Back to the drawing board. We then went back to Hayling Yacht Co (where I built Calypso) to look at another potential candidate. Same broker, same issue. Massively inflated price for a boat that has sat for 12 years (!!!) with no attention, and didn't even have standing headroom in the bridgedeck salon. I put in an offer anyway, as it's a great boat that I've been looking at for years. Surprise, surprise though, the broker didn't even bother getting back to me. Back to the drawing board again.

(It's worth mentioning at this point there's a smaller 33ft Prout at Hayling Yacht as well, that's also sat in the water for as long as anyone can remember. Mouldy interior, no sails, needs a new rig, etc. This thing's only worth £25k done up, but after Hayling Yacht spoke to the SAME broker, the wrecked shell was priced at £15k. My oh my).

Right, back to it. There's a final boat located further down the coast - about a 4 hour drive away and funnily enough, right near AllSpars (who supplied Calypso's new mast).  The boat is a cracker but we initially wrote it off due to 1) small berths and 2.) a 50% premium in price the SAME broker had whacked on top of it whilst it was located near his marina. Thankfully, the new broker talked the guy down that 50% so the boat is back in reasonable common-sensed pricing territory. The new broker also had a chuckle about the previous broker, saying how he never moved stock due to his massively inflated prices.

Anyway, that's it for now. We're off to look at that Cat this week and likely make an offer, we're still doing the job hunting rounds here in the UK, my motorbike's off the road for three more weeks 'til paperwork arrives for it, and once this all goes ahead, Calypso will be skippered back to the UK and put on the market.

Never a dull moment! Photos to follow.

n

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It's been sunny and warm in Lisbon this past week so with the wind finally dropping, we motored out of the marina for some test sailing.

First impressions - we're very happy with the new rig. It still needs dynamic tuning as we test, but we're already seeing a notable increase for the same conditions as our old rig, with no discernible additional heeling or rolling from the extra windage. There was a lot of talk on one of the sailing forums about the taller mast and extra sail area being a bad idea, but so far we're not seeing that.

Sail #1 - 10-12kts. 4kts downwind (genoa only)
Sail #2 - 5-7kts. 1-2kts upwind (1-2kts foul tide)

We're heading back to London tomorrow for a while as the season doesn't restart for a few months, and there's a few things to do before we crack on with crossing to the Caribbean later this year. The past 9 months have taught us a lot about Calypso and also allowed us to explore a number of great places - we're both looking forward to what lies ahead with the new rig and a whole bunch of new countries to explore later in the year...

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After all that rain in Lisbon, we decided enough was enough and it was time to get some sunshine. An evening on the internet later, we were booked on a Saturday morning train for five days in the Algarve. Brilliant.

Lisbon gave us a fine rainy send off, but the weather cleared as we headed further south before the blue skies broke through as we neared the coast. Nathan had come down with man flu the day before so Day #1 in Albufeira was spent watching TV with this view outside....

Day #2 - we grabbed the airport shuttle and headed to the beach and the old town area.

The beach has either an outdoor escalator or glass lift to get down to the sand and old town; who needs stairs with modern technology????

Day #3 and #4 was more exploring around the old town and at the resort's private beach. Nathan was saying he hasn't seen skies that blue since Australia.

 

That was pretty much it really... just an easy five day break away from the boat, exploring a coast we might not get to (if we head direct to the Canaries, that is). On that note, we've decided to store the boat in Lisbon and head back to London for the summer. It's a two-fold reason really - the new mast put a dent in the budget that we might as well top up now and secondly, we're out of season, it's cold and windy, and we can't head further south for at least a few more months. We've just spent a few months sitting in one place and neither of us fee like doing that again, so with the boat in a secure marina and the airport only 5 mins away, it makes sense to get some work in while we can't sail, so we can sail longer when the season comes about again.

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So Lisbon. What a picturesque city. We went for a wander earlier this week and visited the oceanarium for a good few hours of poking around.

It turns out there are hop-on / hop-off bus services here, so we picked up tickets for a couple of the lines and started exploring.

Day 2 of the tour bus rolled around, and we headed back into the Baixa district to hop on.

This is the Santa Justa Lift, built in the early 1900s.

After meandering around the central streets for a bit, the bus headed west along the Tagus. We had a few spots of rain at this point, but figured it'd just be a shower blowing through.

Boy, were we wrong. 8 miles out of town, it started to really come down.

And then it poured. This, believe it or not, is the Monument of Discoveries. About all we discovered is that an open top bus in the middle of February is the wrong place to be.

I don't even know what this is, it was raining so much by this point.

Anyway, that pretty much sums up the reason we're flying out of here in a couple of weeks to spend some time back in the UK. I'd rather be on the boat than living through another British winter, but we can't head south (HUGE waves in Nazare this weekend), we're out of season and the marinas are pretty dead, and I'd rather be killing time in an office, preparing for the Canaries and beyond, than twiddling my thumbs aboard.

Oh, and sitting back in the UK with broadband is infinitely more comfortable than perching in the salon when the tide goes out. I kid you not, this is one of the only berths in the marina where there's good wifi aboard, but of course at low tide three days a month (springs), it means we're slightly cock-eyed. Just slightly. The price one has to pay for facebook.

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Greetings from... Lisbon! We finally had a weather window to leave Nazare, when both the wind and swell were down, and made the most of it to get down the coast. Light winds (well, non-existent) of course meant we couldn't test the new rig, but we did get to test the new spray dodger, steering and props, and everything worked like it should.

Anyway, Thursday was time to say goodbye to the gang at Nazare, and head to Peniche.

What can I say about Peniche... well, it was great to be in a new port, but wow... the inner harbour surge on a calm day was horrendous. Here's Lauren, smiling and happy about 4 hours prior to having the "worst night's sleep of her life".


There was a great fort in Peniche however, which we spent the last few hours of daylight walking around.



And of course, an awesome sunset.



Next day, it was up and at 'em for the 47nm motor down to Cascais. Cascais is a holiday town and was bustling for a February Friday, but was also easily one of our favourite stops so far.

You just know a marina's going to be swanky when it has it's own helipad.... (and they give you a complimentary bottle of wine on check in!)


And when they have tall ships in town....

We had some pretty impressive scenes coming down the coast as well - thousands of years of pounding waves makes for some interesting coastline.

After Cascais, it was time to motor up the Tagus into Lisbon. The scenery was great but wow, was it ever a chilly morning.




In total it was about a 3 hour motor from Cascais to Lisbon, and gave us a chance to see the City's waterfront.

 

Once we were tied up at the new marina, it was time for a quick walk around the local area, then laundry and dinner.... the rain came through which meant conditions on the boat were slightly crowded.

The new marina is a good half hour's cycle out of town so we thought we'd head central today and see what the in-town marina was like. Blue skies, sunshine, and a nice cycle (Lauren scored a bruise or two)...

Which leads me to now, and my current view of Calypso in the Marina Parque das Nacoes.


In the end, we decided to stay at this marina as it's very secure, a good price and we're close to the airport. We're out of season at the moment so things are quite quiet, but the office has a nice lounge area with good wifi and there's a big mall plus an aquarium (25,000 fish!) in walking distance.

Anyway, that's all for this week. The plan for this summer is still up for debate - we can't head to the Caribbean 'til November and the Med is frighteningly expensive in summer - so we're going to spend the next couple of weeks weighing up our options then going from there.

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