England

We've been in England for a couple of weeks now and we're having a busy time of it fixing this and that. There is some work that we'll be carrying out here while we wait for spring and the cruise to Norway. We've had the heating fixed on the boat which is essential for the stay in the UK. There wasn't much wrong with it thankfully it just needed a jolly good service. We want to get the cockpit awning fixed which will make the yacht even more cozy yet but have to wait for the upholsterer to fit us into his busy schedule. One of my little sisters is making us some cockpit cushions at cost which is going to save us a lot of money. We are getting the cockpit table repaired and the hinges replaced which will cost us an arm and a leg (each). We need to get the main bunk's cushions replaced with some sprung mattresses which will be awesome when we get around to getting this done.

Some major repair work under way at the moment is on the dorade vents - basically we have decided to get rid of the two vents into the main saloon because we had major leaks from them when we started shipping green water over the decks on the way from the Azores to France. This means we have to find some way to fill in the holes that are in the deck which is not a little job by any stretch of the imagination. We have done some of the prep work already and are just waiting now for some better weather so we can get on with it. Pictures will follow once the job is underway.

We have started posting the videos of our Bermuda to Azores cruising series and you can access those HERE . It would be good to hear your feedback when you watch the videos so please leave a comment  for us and we'll get back to you (when the internet allows us..lols).

On a sadder note my cat Mr Bigglesworth aka Biggsy or Piggsy is missing form my sister's house. So fingers crossed that they are able to find him again. Hang in there Piggy I'll be picking you up soon, hopefully.


Keep Well and Cheers x

France.

We made it to France, Cherbourg to be more precise. We arrived a couple of days ago and are heading off to Paris tomorrow for a quick catch up with Gilly and her family. Gilly is one of Scrubby's sisters. No time for sight seeing though because we have to get across channel to our winter berth on the Isle of Wight. The weather is looking good for a Tuesday departure next week.

The reason for the stop off in France is that it's the only way we could get the cat into the UK legally. You are not allowed to land him there from a sailing yacht so we had to take him over by ferry where we were met by my little sister Jo who is going to mind the cat for us until we can pick him up again. Unless, of course, we manage to re-home him before then. He needs a forever home on land for several reasons one being that he gets very seasick and the other is that  bureaucratically it's turning out to be a nightmare taking an animal into lots of different countries. Ho hum.

So, I'm just off for a terrific hot chocolate that they serve over here, we have a favorite cafe already and I expect that Scrubby will manage a pastry or two at the same time.

Keep well.

A quick update

It has been a while since I last posted. This is due to several reasons such as we set sail for the Azores and I have been too lazy to bother (lols). We reached the Azores about 10 days ago now and have been carrying out repairs and preparing the boat for the next leg of our journey across to the start point of our circumnavigation in Norway. We plan to over winter in the UK and then head out to Norway in the spring. Well, that's the plan but as we have found out the reality is usually slightly different to "the plan". 

We will be posting v-logs of our trip from Bermuda to the Azores which, even if I say so myself, had some wonderful highlights such as, a visit from a tiny bird, whale sightings, bird sightings and an encounter with about 50 dolphins. We did lose some of the footage due mostly to tiredness when down loading the footage en route but we saved enough for a good showing I think. I still have to view and log all the footage before I start cutting clips together and posting on you tube so that may not happen until we get to the UK. Unless the weather forces us to stay in the Azores longer than we have planned for.

One of the big things that I have learned about living on board the boat is that we have exchanged money for time. We no longer have any money but the most important thing we do have now is time. This is something that neither of us were really expecting, once you have worked on the most important maintenance issues on the boat you are then left with time. Time to sight see, explore and maybe more importantly time for each other. 
Anyway that's enough babbling for now, time (ha ha) for a couple of pictures.

For my 50th birthday, which happened in Bermuda, several things happened, Scrubby went away to work leaving me on the boat for 6 weeks.

I met and made a new best friend.

and Scrubby sent me one of my little sisters for my birthday.

Got to love a guy that after 27 years of marriage can still manage to surprise you **smiles**.

Have to go now and ride my bike to the local supermarket to pick up some groceries, keep well.

Nicky  =^-^=

BVIs to Bermuda, Day 1.

So, BVIs to Bermuda day 1 has been posted to you tube and you can view it here.

There's not a lot to say about day 1, it started off dry and sunny and then went wet and dark (J/K).

We cleared Customs from Sopers Hole, Tortolla, BVIs and that gave us 10 days to sail across to Bermuda before the cats "get out of jail free" papers expired. Now this is easily doable when you are a larger yacht with a speed of 150+ nautical miles (nm) a day. Koru on the other hand is a 36 foot steel hulled motor sailer. She is neither a pure bred sailing yacht nor a sleek, fast gin palace aka a motor boat (well she may be a gin palace).  She's a bit of a mongrel really, but she's our mongrel put together with Scrubby's blood sweat and tears (and his families forbearance). She averaged 100 nm a day which puts her slightly on the Tortoise (should that be Turtle?) side of things rather than the Hare's. You'll see what I mean once I've posted more videos.

That's all for now.

Take Care

=^-^=

What a slacker!

A lot has happened since my last post (well that was my first post on this blog). The boat was launched to our relief but the work and the problems continued. I don't want to be a Debbie Downer so I won't mention anymore on that subject. But needless to say we eventually managed to leave Nanny Cay and headed around to Sopers Hole. We have many great memories of Sopers Hole from our last visit there 3 years ago and with that at the back of our thoughts we picked up a mooring buoy and proceeded to have a very nice time meeting other "yachties" and locals alike. Well, the nice time lasted until the starter motor in Bob's own words "crapped out".


When we sat there with our head in our hands and reminisced about what it cost to get the engine looked at during the refit we were slightly less than happy about it. So once again we contacted the engineer on the phone and after a brief discussion we asked him to find a new starter motor and install that rather than bench testing the misbehaving one and cobbling together a fix on it. Anyway, yet another $1000+ went kicking and screaming into someone else's bank account, grrrr.


That's enough about the boat, what happened to the cat I hear you ask. Well, during the work on the boat the cat was unhappy with the workmen and tried to get into all sorts of impossible spaces to get away from them.

Mr B

I left a cupboard open and in he scampered.

Mr B in the forepeak chuck in locker.

He also ran into problems with the heat and the fumes that sometimes permeated around the yacht from the paint. The only solution we had was to take him off the boat and take him to, yes you've guessed it, the beach.

Me negotiating a little bridge coming back from the beach.

Mr B is in the cat carrier.

Thank goodness we purchased a trolley, he's too heavy to carry any distance in the carrier. 

Home again.


I have to say that he quite enjoyed his time sat at the beach, watching the water and the people splashing about in it. We also enjoyed the odd coffee or two (or three) we supped whilst relaxing with him.

I LOVE THIS PHOTO OF MR B.

Coffee makes us happy.

Mr B chilling on his sun lounger.

I think that you've had enough of me babbling on for now. More catch ups to follow and maybe I'll throw in the odd teaser video from the sailing we did to get to (dah dah daaahhhhh) Bermuda.

Keep Well.

Cheers =^-^=

The Refit

When we left our yacht in the Caribbean three years ago we ripped out the galley and hacked off the solid dodger. But why would we do this? Over 20 years ago my Scrubby had a dream and his dream was to buy a yacht and sail off into the sunset. Well he had actually planned a dynamic circumnavigation which is hardly the romantic notion of sailing off into the sunset, but that would be another book entirely! Firstly we needed to raise funds to buy a yacht. So the house promptly went up for sale and we started the search to find the perfect yacht. Many magazines and books were bought and read, countless yachts were looked over and rejected… and so the next idea was to build our own. 

Scrubby liked to dream big and no project was too difficult him to undertake . After looking at and rejecting a Roberts design for a steel hull we came across a Van de Stadt option that looked good. My Scrubby then explored the possibilities of a self-built steel hull and duly investigated the price of sheets of steel and the possibilities of attending a welding course at the local Polytechnic College. Fortunately for us, someone he bumped into one day knew someone else who already had a steel hull in storage and we could get it from him for a dream of a price, a fraction of what it would cost us to build our own. But wow, the whole thing was massive at 50 foot, much bigger than we thought we wanted, covered entirely in rust and complete with it's own botanical garden growing from below decks. The dream of a self-build hull was duly rejected as the reality of the project's scale started to sink in. 

That plan abandoned, what next? Well we still wanted a steel hull, so we looked around for a boatbuilder and eventually found the wonderful man who built our hull and installed the engine, hatches and spray foamed the inside of the yacht, all at a very reasonable cost. He also did a beautiful paint job on the outside of the hull. He is now retired from boat building but is always willing to answer any questions we have for him about the yacht. And over the years we've had a few. The stainless steel work was also done at this stage of the build by another magnificent craftsman. Our boat sat in their yard for over a year before we could take possession of her. Anyway, to cut a long story short 7 years later and my Scrubby had finished fitting-out the inside of the yacht, and for a home build we thought she looked good. Cut to about 17 years later, and after quite a few frustrations it was decided that if it didn't work then we needed to get it sorted before we could get on with his big dream… hence the dumping of the galley and that solid dodger. 

Now three years down line from when we set about the boat with jigsaw and sledgehammer, we've been hanging around the BVIs for what seems ages waiting for the work to be finished on the yacht's new galley and dodger before we can relaunch and move back on board. The work force is definitely on "Island Time", and with many deadlines coming and going things are dragging on and our collective patience is being sorely tested. So here we sit, squatting aboard someone else's boat with a nearly completed yacht refit and paint job. We have a fully revised version of the now not quite so dynamic circumnavigation and are champing at the bit to get the details sorted in our quest to simplify our life. Details such as visas, getting our cat out of the cattery in Texas and flown to join us on the yacht, stowing our possessions and provisioning the yacht for the voyage…  which in itself is not quite as simple as it sounds when you have food intolerances…  

This is me carsondcat aka Nicky

And this is Scrubby aka Bob