A pre-departure celebration or two

We're now only a couple of weeks from the off (though you might not believe it from the chaos at home - boxes everywhere, packing at a frantic pace!) so we decided to have a little drinks party on board Maunie at the weekend. I think we probably broke some records for the number of people aboard - at one stage the tally was 16.

L-R: Jacqui, Neil, Amanda, Sean, Karen, David, Sue, Gerard, Dianne

L-R: Neil, Jacqui, David, Karen, Andy, Lucinda, Anita, Cora, Will, Sean

Andy, Dianne, Lucinda

Dianne, Cora, Tim, Will, Anita

With a glass or two of champagne to celebrate our voyage it was great to have friends aboard and it was a great opportunity to show people our floating home.

It's not been all champagne and strawberries though. During last weekend's sail we discovered a leak from the deck above the galley as we beat to windward with waves washing over the leeward deck. We found the source but getting to it involved taking apart the locker above the cooker and we then discovered that the microwave (yes we have one of those aboard!) was pretty rusty, indicating that this leak has been dripping gently for a while.

A new microwave cooker has been purchased and fitted and the leak sealed; a job we weren't expected but better to find it now than when we're in mid-ocean!

The Atlantic Crew Meet and the Parasailor Flies!

We've had a weekend with Fergus and Rich (the brave crew joining us for the Atlantic crossing in November) aboard Maunie. It was the first time they had met (luckily they seem to get on!) and on the Saturday we went out for a sail from Dartmouth in bright sunshine and a Force 4-5 north-westerly. This provided us with the first opportunity to fly the new Parasailor spinnaker.

As you'll see from the photos, it's a novel sail - part spinnaker, part paraglider. It has an inflating 'wing' across an open slot in the upper third of the sail which makes it very stable and generates some lift at the bow of the boat. The slot also allows any sudden gusts of wind to vent through it, making it much more resistant to the sort of conditions we're likely to encounter in mid-Atlantic.

The sail also has a certain logo that you may recognise! We really needed another boat close by to take photos of us.

We're really pleased with the sail - the boat was very stable and went like a train. The wind got up a bit so getting the sail down a bit dramatic. We had a long beat back to Dartmouth for a well-deserved meal at the Royal Castle.

Here's the crew

Rich

Fergus

Us

On-board pirate (made by our friend Jenny in the village)

We're now back home madly packing and sorting the house. All being well we will move aboard in a couple of weeks - yikes!

Progess Update

Well, we're in full-on preparation mode now! Maunie was ashore at Baltic Wharf in Totnes again for a few days to have some rigging work done under warranty. It was also an opportunity for us to inspect the antifouling capabilities of our new 'Coppercoat' after 4 months afloat - we're glad to report that all was well, with no nasties adhering to the hull!

Whilst we had access to some technical help at the yard, we installed a 60-litre fuel tank (one of the many bits that came with the boat) in an almost-made-to-measure space in the bilges. It now serves as a reserve diesel tank (with about 15 hours worth of motoring) but has its own separate fuel filter system; this will be a great safety feature since it allows us to switch over immediately if the main fuel filter gets blocked (it can happen if you're unlucky enough to take on contaminated fuel).

Filling the new fuel tank from a jerrycan

Maunie's now back on the mooring and Richard and Fergus (crew for the ARC transatlantic crossing in November) are joining us for a weekend soon. It'll be a great opportunity for us to get some sailing in, do a few safety exercises and plan how we'll run the boat. Not that it's a democracy, of course; the captain's word is law!

Meanwhile, back at home we're in the process of packing. We're incredibly fortunate to have access to some storage units whilst we're away so have done the first delivery runs with bikes, tools and furniture. Lots more to do but we now have one completely empty bedroom to use as a place to assemble all the things we'd like to squeeze into the boat!

Our Voyage Plan!

Some of you may be new to this blog so, with apologies to regular viewer, we thought we should recap a little as well as giving you a bit of an overview of what we plan to do this autumn. The blog has quite a lot of history so you can scroll back in time if you wish!

Anyway, as you’ll probably know by now, we're taking a career break to go ‘blue water’ sailing, after 13 years at Yeo Valley for Graham and five years running Wavelength HR for Dianne. Having sailed around Britain a few years ago, we have been thinking about this for a while and the dream began to crystallise into reality about 3 years ago. We bought our boat, ‘Maunie of Ardwall’, as a restoration project – she’d been left unused and unloved for several years following the death of her first owner so we got her at a ‘bargain price’ (perhaps less of a bargain if we work out how many hours we’ve spent fixing her up!) – and she’s the perfect yacht for two of us to handle. This is an outline of what we plan to do.


Our first goal is to sail to the Canaries, 1350 miles from Falmouth across the infamous Bay of Biscay, with stops en-route in Spain and Portugal. We need to be there by early-November, which is when the trade winds kick in to take us across the Atlantic, so we aim to leave the UK before the end of August to reduce the risk of gales across Biscay. Mind you, with the current weather patterns who knows what the weather will do!

For safety and shared knowledge, we’ve signed up on the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) which has been running for a number of years. This year a record 270 boats will be setting off from Las Palmas to St Lucia on the 25th November.
Click here for the ARC website
With the ARC comes lots of support – daily weather forecasts and safety reporting, shared technical knowledge and a few parties at the finish. It should be a good introduction to crossing the ocean – which should take about 21-24 days for a boat of our size (and we’ll be on the smaller end of the scale; the average boat size is nearly 50ft). Two friends, Fergus McDonald and Richard Fetherston, both experienced sailors, are going to join us for the crossing which will make life much easier in terms of night watches and sail trimming. You’ll be able to follow us on the ARC website since each boat is given a ‘Yellowbrick’ – an automated satellite transponder which sends hourly reports of position, speed and course to the web tracker. More generally, whilst we’re away we will have email access via a clever satellite phone and share details of that nearer the time; it will allow us to upload the boat blog and to send photos.

Once we get to the Caribbean for Christmas (sounds nice), we broadly have two options:

1. Spend 4 months exploring the Caribbean then head north in April (to avoid the hurricane season) and return to Europe via the Azores. This would be a 12-month adventure

2. Leave the Caribbean in February, transit the Panama Canal and head for the Pacific for a circumnavigation. The route would look something like this:

Broad timings would be to arrive in New Zealand in November 2013, to spend 4 months there to avoid the cyclone season to the north. Depart March 2014 and aim to be in South Africa by November 2014, on to the Caribbean (probably via Brazil) in April 2015, back home via the Azores in August 2015.

The timings are all pretty prescribed to take advantage of the prevailing trade winds and currents. We can’t use the old ‘short cut’ via the Suez Canal and the Med due to the political situation and our route via Mauritius would keep us well away from the Somali pirates! It does add almost 6,000 miles to the trip, though.

Our choice of option will depend on how we feel about the life on board after a few months – we’d like to go for the circumnavigation option but we’ll see how things progress.

In the meantime, as you’ll imagine, we’ve still got a lot to do in a very short time but we've made good progress so far. Di’s completed her 9 day medical course so is very eager to apply ointment and sutures. Graham’s been to the World Cruising Club’s 3-day Blue Water symposium (which has added to the to-do lists) and has completed his Long Range Radio Certificate. We’ve both done an Ocean Safety training course in April and are busy updating all the safety kit on board. As you'll read elsewhere in the blog, we've installed a water maker and a satellite phone.

A video test

This video show Fergus helming Maunie downwind in a Force 6-7 from Darthmouth. These are the sorts of conditions we'll face on the crossing from the Canaries to St Lucia (but with much bigger waves!)

Other boat news - we had a daysail on Saturday and tried out the watermaker. An amazing bit of kit - it produced wonderfully clear fresh water from a particularly cloudy looking sea.

Jubilee Celebrations aboard and the water-maker is installed!

As previously mentioned we got involved with a call from the Coastguard on our way back to Dartmouth - this 24ft gaffer has got into difficulties in fairly heavy seas. They given up sailing and were motoring towards Salcombe but we think the bumpy conditions had stirred up sediment from the bottom of their fuel tank so the engine lost power and then, as we approached them, died altogether. We had quite a log tow into the harbour where the harbourmaster's launch took them on and towed them to a mooring. They were very pleased to be in!

Back on our mooring, we completed the installation of our new water-maker in the generator room (the generator is now free of leaks, thankfully!).  The raw seawater comes in from seacock in the hull (just visible middle-right of the photo below) and into a 12v pump / filter unit (bottom of the photo) before going into the high-pressure pump and membrane. Here it's forced, at nearly 1000psi, through a long tubular membrane (easier to see in the second photo) - fresh water comes out, in relatively small quantities (about 30 litres per hour) whilst a greater flow of salt water goes out of the boat through a second seacock. We're run it on its fresh-water cycle (it's not a good idea to try the seawater in the harbour in case there is oil or other contaminants around) so next time we're aboard we'll go our into the bay and test it fully.

While Graham was busy with the plumbing, there were all sorts of Jubilee things happening on the river, including a parade of 60 boats of all shapes and sizes:

Maunie was 'dressed overall' for the occasion - the flags have to be hoisted in a very specific order!!

An idyllic anchorage and a rescue at sea

Our last night in the Scilly Isles was spent at anchor in St Helen's Pool, between the inhabited islands of Tresco and St Martin's but surrounded by rocks and uninhabited islands.

Maunie is the white dot mid-left, looking from St Helen's with Tresco to the right and 

St Mary's in the distance

The return passage to Falmouth was fantastic - a very long spinnaker reach with some top speeds. The skipper needed a light snack just to keep his strength up:

Positively flying along!