A few changes to the boat

Recently I had a day of work due to having a full blown cold, which was doing the rounds at work, I don’t often take time of work being self employed. I had been in bed from the early hours and I was wide awake by 3.30 in the morning. A copy of Multihull review had been delivered the day before, a British magazine, which is specific to multihull boats.

One of the articles was about the Southampton boat show and the La Rochelle boat show, both of which were on at the same time. The article goes on to explain about an offer running at the show from Fountaine Pajot, due to the fact that Lagoon had also come up with a boat show deal on it’s 380 S2 range making it very competitive against the Mahe. Fountaine Pajot’s reaction to this, which is said to be unheard of, was to create a boat show package to compete with the offer from Lagoon.

Back in June when we placed our order for the boat, we were willing to wait and see if any offers did actually come out at the boat shows. Carl from M.I. Cats clearly explained to us that Fountaine Pajot have never before created a boat show package, therefore there no reason to wait for the boat show. So, we paid out 10 percent deposit on the understanding that should there be a boat show deal that we would be eligible for the offer.

After reading the article, I was soon in contact with Karen from M.I. Cats to try and get further information. Karen confirmed that there had been a show offer which started only at the end of the Southampton Boat Show.

The offer was the Mahe with additional extras thrown in for free…!

The additional extras are:

Additional Water Tank
Lazy Bag
Folding Props
Bimini Top
Dinghy Davits
Holding Tank
2.7m Dinghy
6hp Outboard
Antifouling
E-pack 1 (Instruments, GPS, VHF)

After a couple of conversations with Karen, it was soon established that we could take up the boat offer if we wanted it.

Now then, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work out what the answer was.

Basically, it is 20,236.00 Euros of additional equipment, we would have to waver our previously agreed discount of 5 thousand Euros and accept the boat show price of 176 thousand Euros for the package, against the original price of 173 thousand Euros, 168 thousand with the discount.

We are both pleased with our new additions to the boat, some of the options are very nice but not a must have, now we have the best of both worlds.

The other options we are going to add to our list, to bring the boat up to our specification are:

220Volt System
1 x 12/220V 500W Inverter
Spifurl Bowsprit & Gear
2 additional Jammers next to current ones on the helm
Raymarine electronics as discussed with Didier at Pochon

Hopefully, Pochon will swap out the E-pack option for the equivalent Raymarine kit.

The above should now bring the boat up to a very high specification.

This month has gone really quickly for us both and it now feels as though we are on the home straight.

Won’t be long now…!

Merry Christmas!

Well the last big milestone is here and I think that the reality is very slowly starting to dawn that this will be our last Christmas in the UK for quite sometime. Kevin went to his last Christmas party at the company he has worked with for the last 12 years last night (and has been recovering since!). I even almost took a picture of the frosty white ground outside to keep as reminder on the way round.

I still find that because I cannot tell anyone in the office yet that the reality only really hits home at weekends when Kevin and I continue our preparations. Whereas for Kevin it is getting extremely near as the 3 months to the end of his contract and the collection of the boat will I’m sure, be here sooner than we know it once we get through the New Year. Christmas seems really to have crept up on me this year, despite being organised for the first time ever and having bought every present on the internet a few weeks ago, now it is here I’m beginning to panic a bit that there must be more that we should be doing in order to get ready.

However, I guess the main update since our last post is that we have decided to make life easier by moving the wedding to Sunday 10th Aug. Ironically, the only weekend date available on HMS Warrior (the venue) and coincidentally the end of my contract (the previous date was the end of Kevin’s). The main aim of this replan is that we will literally be sailing off into the sunset the day after the wedding (weather permitting!). This now gives Kevin four clear months to prep the boat for our trip, we are even contemplating bringing it back to the UK briefly to make that job simpler and reduce the amount of time we have to spend apart. We are great believers in fate and we hadn’t paid the deposit on the previous booking because things just weren’t lining up as planned, this way works out better all round. The deposit though is now paid for Warrior and the Registrar and caterers booked – there surely can’t be much more to it can there?!

We are now able to space out nicely the preparations and it allows us to concentrate on the immediate requirements for the boat. It is very difficult to plan what goes on board when the boat is not in front of you to measure up etc, so we are aiming to only buy those things which are required for delivery before we collect e.g. liferafts etc. We are planning to do this shopping during the period of the London Boat Show in the New Year in case there are any deals available. We haven’t bothered with Christmas presents for each other this year with all of that to buy soon, to be honest there is nothing else that either of us wants now but the delivery of the boat!!!

So, Merry Christmas one and all, especially to family and friends who are kindly reading the updates to our progress and to those friends we have not yet met who are kind enough to contact us and wish us well in our ventures. I hope that the festive season brings much cheer to all (but I hope you’ll forgive us for yearning for a somewhat warmer one next year which will, we hope be spent in the Caribbean!).

Ugrib

One of the good things about running a blog is that from time to time you make contact with like mined people, guess that is the point of running a blog.

The other day we received an email from Steve Hayles who turns out to be the author and developer behind Ugrib the weather forecasting software, which I have been using for some time now and I think it’s brilliant!

Steve has informed me that the software is written and serviced from the UK. So apologies from my last mention of this as I described them as a bunch of American sailor / developers.

Steve comes from Christchurch on the South Coast of England and is a professional racing navigator. It’s good to know that the person behind the development of a product has a very clear understanding of its requirements.

Below is a link to Steve site, which is not bad either.

http://www.grib.us/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx

Steve keep up the good work and I will be keeping a close eye on Ugrib, which as far as I concerned is the find of the century.

Celestial Navigation

It’s been a while since I updated the blog, I have been trying to get my head around celestial navigation and with the arrival of my new toys, sextant, sight reduction tables and universal plotting sheets, then I feel the need to update you with my progress.

After a long delay with a British company on ordering the above equipment and on chasing up the company to see were our order was and not getting any satisfaction, we decided to have a look elsewhere and came across Celstaire, who are an American company, I sent then an email with a provisional order for the equipment and got a very prompt reply, which was a good sign of things to come?

Ken from Celstaire, indicated that all the equipment was in stock and could be shipped as soon as I placed the order, without any further hesitation I placed the order on Thursday morning and by Tuesday morning the equipment was in my possession. Exactly what I ordered and it all came neatly packaged and in one piece. I can highly recommend this company and I am very impressed with the service and products they offer ten out of ten.

If you want to have a look at the web site please follow the link: http://www.celestaire.com/



Tuesday night is set aside attending the RYA Ocean class at Fleetwood, we are now getting down to calculating a fix from noon sights and sun-run-sun sights, which from my point of view is one of the main reasons for attending the course, the idea being we have an alternative way of calculating our position other than relying on GPS all the time.

To assist with the course I have bought a couple of books, Ocean sailing - Tom Cunliffe, Ocean Yachtmaster - Adlard Coles - Pat Langley-Price & Philip Ouvry, both of these books help in different ways, due to the different approach in the styles of writing.



Last week Paul who is also attending the course at Fleetwood and myself were ‘shooting stars’ with the new sextant on the car park after the class. By coincidence the latter part of the course on Tuesday night was spent doing star recognition. I am really impressed with the sextant, which as far as sextants go is the whole horizon version, not traditional split view horizon. I am sure the traditionalist out there will be booing at this point. I am very happy with it and that’s what matters!

As part of the course I am trying to develop various sight reduction sheets for each of the celestial body’s and so far it really is helping me to piece things together, I would recommend anyone who is interested in this approach do the same thing and develop your own method, which you can remember and reproduce.

This weekend was Jo’s birthday and we now have a rule about buying each other presents, which is it must be something that each one us would find useful on our adventures. Saturday morning Jo was the proud owner of a new hand held GPS Garmin 72, a complete set of admiralty Caribbean leisure charts, solio solar panel, freedom flashlight and a large quantity of rechargeable AA batteries.

Charted Route

There must be something about sitting on a train before dawn commuting across the country to work that makes me think of our trip, as once more this blog comes to you on route. Progress has been relatively slow of late hence the lack of updates recently.
One very visible sign of our plans though is a very neatly arranged pile of rolls of charts (maps of the sea). Our primary means of navigation will be a chart plotter which is a specialized computer that displays charts against a real time position from GPS like a sat nav but also interfaces to our radar and depth sounder. The main advantage being that these charts are easily updated as buoys or sand banks move and ports and marinas are developed etc. However Kev and I both prefer to use paper charts for plotting and this also gives a back up in the event of electronics failure. However charts are very costly when you are buying on the scale required, either paper or electronic and buying two complete sets can be prohibitive. So when Kevin was offered an opportunity to buy a complete set of paper charts and about 40 pilot books (guide books to coastal areas) we jumped at the chance! The charts are out of date but on the premise that the land doesn't generally move it's a reasonable back up when used with caution. Also I'm planning a new hobby of manual chart updates from the Notice to Mariners lists of changes. We also have a hand held GPS which links to a laptop plus secondary more up to date chart software. Solar charging for the laptop etc etc - when you start off in technical diving where you need to carry everything you need for an emergency with you plus a spare you learn to be prepared!

I'm sure that it's a feature of all travel plans that looking at maps causes excitement, so I'm sure you can imagine the Christmas like effect of sorting through about 50 completely random rolls of about 1000 charts! I'd arrived back from visiting family late on Saturday to find the study full of charts - I think it was about 8.30 on Sunday morning when we started still in our dressing gowns to look through....well about 6 hours later we were still going all other plans out the window! However, by then they been sorted first roughly into oceans then the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian ocean piles were sorted into folios for each leg of the journey plus a few extras to accomodate route changes and all had been catalogued (I must have been a librarian in a past life!). The best bit was unwrapping each roll though with accompanying squeals of "Cool - The Galapagos!″ or the Panama canal or the Suez etc etc! You just don't get the same excitement from the electronic version. There is still a large pile in the loft which covers areas we won't visit this time, but we're storing these for the next lap! All the charts to be used are still sat in the corner of the living room. I think we're both enjoying the reminder!
Other news is Kevin's sextant has finally arrived after the one I ordered for his birthday was out of stock then stuck in customs for weeks after arriving from China, so we cancelled and ordered from Celestaire in the US. This worked out to be good timing for Kevin to do star sightings during his RYA Ocean course on Tuesday. He was also showing me Mars last night and others, which was fun, I can't wait for night watches on clear nights.
Finally, wedding preparations are gradually progressing. I have got the dress and booked the registrar. Need to pick menu options and do invitions next, though I think the wedding list could be the hardest as toasters etc may not be very helpful so we need to do a list. I understand that some chandelries do offer the service or alternatively I have been to a couple of weddings where contributions to travelling has been suggested.
Oh and I nearly forgot my other milestone met, I have finally loaded every CD we own into our new iPod. Which you may not think of as a big achievement but I assure you has taken hours! Plus it saves us storing CDs and gives us a great variation of music on passage. I gather that the talking books are the thing to have on night watches too.

Factory Visit

Last weekend we went to La Rochelle to meet up with Karen and Paul from M.I. Cats to do a factory tour and have one of the company skippers to take us out on a Mahe and show us what it can do.



Karen and Paul meet us at the airport, we then had a brief car journey around La Rochelle, Paul giving us the guided tour of places of interest. After the tour we all agreed to sit at the side of the harbour for a few refreshments whilst discussing our itinerary for the next couple of days.



First item on the agenda was going to be the sea trial conducted by one of the company skippers, then we would visit Didier from Pochon (Marine Electronic store in La Rochelle). We have already decided not to fit the factory standard Furuno electronics, opting instead for Pochon to fit the Raymarine equivalent. After discussing the electronics we would move onto the factory to have a tour round the facilities.






The night ended with a few more refreshments and a quick walk around the inner harbour of La Rochelle, which is a wonderful place and as time went on we grew to like the place even more.

The morning soon arrived with bright blue sky, brilliant sunshine and a healthy offshore wind, good, we wanted to see how the boat would handle under these conditions. Karen and Paul arrived on time at our hotel to pick us up and take us to the harbour for the sea trial.

We arrived outside the Fountaine Pajot office, which is facing Europe’s largest marina, a forest of mast’s as far as the eye can see. We went inside for coffee and introductions to Valerie on reception and Thierry Billard who does the after sales management. Thierry did not look to stressed out, which was a good sign of things to come. After coffee, Alain the skipper arrived to take us out on the sea trial. We made our way down to the boat, which after some major re-shuffle of surrounding boats and some very impressive boat handling by Alain, we were off out of the harbour to conduct the trial.



Alain was talking about the England and France world cup rugby match, which was a brilliant ice breaker and we all soon relaxed in each others company, clearing the harbour Alain decided to raise the sails, yes with this wind we will defiantly need to reef at least one, allowing the skipper to show his and the boats metal. Alain thought differently no reef, full sail, wow, hang on for the fair ground ride, the boat turned around and set off like it had just been fired out of a catapult. Alain demonstrated how well and how fast the boat pointed to wind, we were racing along and the boat was as steady as a rock, with full sail and the strong wind the boat was healing slightly, which was expected under the conditions and handled like a dream. If I had any slight doubts about our new purchase, which I don’t, they were soon dismissed within a very short time. Words fail me to describe the awesome experience and every credit to Alain and the boat. Talking to Alain about his tactics, he assured us he would not do this further offshore and if you want to sell boats this is how you do it. The experience was fantastic and it could not get any better than this, or could it?



After the sea trial we had a quick stop for lunch then onto Pochon to meet Didier and talk about our choice of electronics to be fitted to the boat. Didier spoke perfect English, which was good as my French is embarrassing poor. Within a very short space of time both Jo and myself were completely at ease with the decision to use Pochon to do the installation as the boat is being commissioned just before sea trials.

We then set off to go the factory and see the boats being built. The factory was a short ride out of La Rochelle and on the way to the factory we passed a truck with a Mahe on the back along with police escort heading the other way, which brought a smile to everyone’s face.



On arrival at the factory we were signed in and given visitors passes, Paul had a quick chat with the manager and was told that so long as we were accompanied with Paul and Karen we could wonder round the factory at our leisure. Having worked in factory environments, I was surprised at how clean and organised the setup was, basing my previous experience on, working at TVR in Blackpool and memories of the body shop, which was at best organised chaos and a very unhealthy environment, not a place to spend to much time in.





We were very impressed with the staff who just got on with the job at hand and all seemed to be hard at it, with very little evidence of management. The quality of the work was evident in every department. The Mahe line was our first port of call and straight away you can see that this is a very important range for Fountaine Pajot, good, because we are buying one. Rarely these days do see people take pride in their work and the mixture of male and female workers was also a surprise, as many female as male, which must make a better working environment.



We started at the top of the production line and worked our way down, seeing every stage of manufacture. All the work being carried out was very neat and tidy, you can’t ask for any more. We also went into the other production lines, which were of equal expectations.



Out in the yard there were Mahe’s everywhere you looked, it was fantastic, buying a boat is a big financial undertaking and you need to be sure that you have made the right decision. We have!

After the factory tour, back to La Rochelle for some more refreshments, we had a meal out in one of the many local restaurants. In general the food and service is excellent and a good night was had by all.

The following day was time to go home, our flight was booked to be later in the afternoon, giving us time to wonder round some of the local chandlers and spend some time in La Rochelle to find our bearings. Wondering round the marinas, no matter where you looked a Mahe would be present. We liked La Rochelle that much, we changed our flight to be a day later giving us more time to enjoy the local sights.





If you are thinking of buying a Mahe, but aren’t quite convinced take some time off to do this factory tour, you wont regret it.

"There is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

Last Sunday saw the maiden voyage of our tender (inflatable) Indefatigable at Knott End. We arrived at the car park at the seafront and proceeded to unload our boat (in pieces) from the boot of our little Fiat Punto. I'm sure there's advertising mileage there for both Honda and Fiat. Obviously it didn't seem to fit back into it's bag or the boot quite so well later, but they never show you those bits on the tv!
The aluminium slatted floor turned out to be the ultimate flat pack, quick to assemble, not quite so easy to fit into the floor of the tender. The instructions were obviously in 10 different languages, with the English sections not making much more sense than the rest. Anyway doubtless to the amusement of the surprising number of visitors to Knott End on a Sunday in October, very soon the pile of random pieces soon formed a boat shape. We carried her down to the water and took her for a spin. The smaller engine we opted for won't win any speed trials but can be stored upright in the anchor locker and so reduce the weight to carry off the davits on the transom and make us far less attractive to thieves.

There were quite a few boats heading out of Fleetwood for the usual dash round the buoy during the couple of hours that the lock gates open at high water. It felt great to be out there too even if our vessel was slightly less grand. We did a bit of manoeuvring practice with Alex who clearly preferred the wheel of our last boat to a tiller that you have to point to the opposite direction to where you want to go!
As pathetic as it may sound we'd been really looking forward to getting out on the water on our little tender. A day off to have fun. It was fantastically relaxing to be out there. The sun came out for a beautiful sunny afternoon, we were also joined by a flock of oyster catchers overhead. They were an amazing sight as the light caught individual birds exposing the white then dark side of their wings as they flew, creating the effect of a ripple spreading across a sun drenched pool of water. Then they were gone, I realise how much we miss dashing around and what a great deal more we'll experience as we travel.

It is certainly the difficult phase of the planning at the moment. We always knew that it would get harder before it gets better and it is certainly difficult trying to juggle the many arrangements with full time job, travel and evening courses etc.
My main preoccupation continues to be the house sale particularly with the constant headlines about potential price drops etc at present. Viewings in general appear to have dropped off and yet it seems as though every other house locally is for sale. We clearly timed it just wrong in putting our house on the market, in terms of the credit squeeze impacting the UK from the States. I even looked at the website of one of these guaranteed quick house sale companies on Saturday morning in desperation to get some sort of definite timetable to our plans. However, calculation of the 80% offer that they make shocked me into realising how hasty we are being.
So, we have decided to look into renting our house instead of selling, as we have had the house for only a year and the site is not yet complete so we are not really making the most of our investment having spent on furnishings etc. It would mean that I would have to see out my contract til Aug 08 to make up for the delay in the release of equity. However as much as it is not what I'd like to do, it's a small price to pay in the grand scheme. Apparently there are approximately 10 people queuing for each available rental locally, so it seems a good option. Though rental rates still seem to stay beneath the level that the property value could make in interest, so it's still a gamble on a rising UK housing market. It will also mean us having to sell Kevin's house instead but that will definitely be easier as it is a good starter home.
Finally, before anyone else asks no we haven't booked the wedding yet! I'm also aware that it apparently takes longer to adjust a wedding dress than to build a house. I'm trying not to get drawn in to the wedding hysteria, but it seems every one has fallen for the hype that it is required to order flowers several months before they are even planted etc. I've been a bit reluctant to commit to the date until my contract end date was confirmed as I wasn't sure about spending the first few months of married life apart. Obviously that also gives an excuse to put off my non-existent wedding dress diet a bit longer too, as I'm clearly not quite so ambivalent about the hype! As I thought I wasn't applying quite enough pressure to myself yet so starvation seems the necessary extra. No I haven't finished my Yacht master theory either due in November either before you ask! Though I did get up and go for a jog yesterday morning at 6.15 in the dark and the rain and now walking up stairs is painful! You're right I finally am loosing it!
Still we fly to La Rochelle for our factory visit tomorrow, so that will be a great relief - subject to the rugby results! At least all the boats we see will be preordered otherwise I think the temptation to cut out the hassle and just go might be too much...though I think even a slightly larger tender outboard engine might be enough by March to tempt us!

Route Planning

At the boat show we visited the Garmin stand with the intention to purchase a PC interface cable for my hand held Garmin GPS 72. After a very brief conversation with the people on the stand it became apparent that they did not have any interface leads.

One of the Garmin reps gave me his business card and said send him an email and he would post one out to me free of charge (Yeah right), today the cable arrived in the post and good to his word, it was free. Excellent service!

The main reason for this is to use the PC/GPS in conjunction with Google Earth.

Download the latest version from google, pay for the upgrade 20 US dollars per year, which will then interface to a GPS, Garmin or Magellan - I recommend Garmin, most of you will already know were this is going…

Once installed on the PC, go to the menu at the top of the screen and select Tools, go to the bottom of the menu Options. On selecting Options. Go to the tab, which says Cache.

Increase the Disk Cache Size to 2000 MB, maximum size.

Locate your home port on google earth and zoom into the area as close as you can get, then start to pan around your chosen cruising area, again zooming in to the maximum resolution, try adding place markers as you go and make a route.

Unplug PC from the internet and take on board the boat, fire up google earth on the PC with GPS attached, yes I know its not connected to the internet, you will see a warning from google earth, read the warning, smile, and select the No button to continue.

It's brilliant and works a treat, this is going to be a great way to visualise our progress and add pictures to our blog. We will be using the usual Admiralty paper charts for plotting our route and will have a chart plotter as a back-up.

This has to be the best 10 quid I have ever spent and I hope others find this useful.

Daily Life

We are on a roll with our blogging now. This is another mobile update just about to pull into Leeds station after a 4.30 alarm for me and poor Kevin to drive me to the station at 5.15am. The joy of a one car family! Although we are both early risers usually anyway so I think it's good to have a bit more time together. The topic of conversation for this morning's journey was the merits of additional water tanks and / or filters over a water maker - spiraling into a generator to run the water maker. I am actually struggling to think what normal couples must find to talk about everyday! Luckily we have added to our sailing friends last week after meeting Jonny and Kate through a sailing forum. They leave July next year and will be doing a very similar route. They also live in Newcastle (where I work) and have their boat in Fleetwood about 20 mins from us. I went for diner with them last week and it was great to talk through our reasons for the trip, frustrations over Home Info Packs etc!

This weekend we had planned to meet them at their boat Newtsville to have a look and for Kevin to meet them. Unfortunately for our plans but fantastically in every other way England beat Australia in the Rugby Union World Cup quarter finals. So I'm afraid that a few too many beers were consumed with our friends Jill and Phil who were staying with us. I'm told it's the nerves that caused it! Either that or it was our endless sailing plans, but they seemed to take it well enough. So with results of the other shock defeat of New Zealand that really rounded off dinner!

Slow Progress

It has been sometime since the last update and the complaints have been heeded! I thought it especially important to have one available for the Monday morning blues in the office (I’m sure that’s not just me!).

I guess some of the reason for the lack of updates has been a lack of progress in general. After being fairly optimistic following our first house viewing, we have heard nothing back and have had to assume that the potential buyers are not interested. They had seemed to be in a perfect position to buy our house, but have obviously decided not to. Our marketing has also been hindered by the removal of our For Sale board by the developers, we did sign a restricted covenant agreeing not to display a board and after a couple of requests by letter they decided to enforce the contract themselves by removing it. I am getting seriously worried now that the sale of the house will slow down our departure and potentially my leaving work. After lots of stressing by me, we have decided to press ahead with plans and hope it all comes together in time. Kevin’s contract finishes in March 2008 anyway, so we should still be in a position to pick up the boat, we just might have more dual living for a while. I guess there is still a long time to go, so I shouldn’t be panicking yet, I will just have to stop being so impatient for now!

We were originally planning to head to La Rochelle for our factory visit at Fountaine Pajot (boat builders) at the beginning of October, there has been a slight change of plan and we are now booked in for the end of next week. We are really looking forward to this both as a holiday and as a chance to progress our plans. We are planning to do some window shopping in La Rochelle at the many chandlers there to see if we can buy in bulk the basic kit we need to buy (spare anchors, fenders etc) which will save us quite a lot of hassle in terms of transporting. We have our shopping list prepared so we will take that with us and see what we can negotiate. The other option is the London Boat Show or other local chandlers. We have also got a quote now for a company in La Rochelle to supply and fit the electronics we want through MI Cats who have been very helpful in coordinating these arrangements. The marine electronics company have access to the boat during production and will be able to fit the electronics while it is off the water and the mast is down etc with an onboard warranty. This is obviously a much easier option to take and the importance of that the week after we get married shouldn’t be underestimated! We are reviewing the prices at the moment, as Kevin fitted all of our previous electronics, but it does involve drilling holes through the hull and climbing the mast on a brand new boat, so we are definitely leaning in the direction of handing it over to them!

It was Kevin’s birthday last week and as agreed only “useful” presents were allowed! We’d discussed that I would buy him a sextant, which one to be decided when he’d started his course at Fleetwood. Unfortunately, this plan back fired when the chosen model (Astra III B, All View) was found to be out of stock throughout the UK and Channel Islands! Anyway, as this was the chosen model, Kevin has had to wait for the back order, but he did get some charts of the Canary Islands which has been great to make it all seem a bit more real again.

Boat Show Purchase

Southampton boat show allowed me to look in detail at some of the items I was interested in, in particular the Sea Brake.

After watching the video on the Seateach stand and seeing the item hung from the ceiling and on making a closer inspection, I was soon reaching for the credit card to purchase one Sea Brake. I also bought the required warp and tackle to complete the setup.

I am really pleased with the quality of all the items and very impressed with Stuart who sold us the equipment.



Stuart also demonstrated the Parasail and quoted us a price for a suitable sized one for a Mahe 36. We are still waiting to see the Spifurl from FP before we make our minds up on what we want for down wind sailing.

Night School

Well I have just had my first night school on the RYA Ocean course at Fleetwood nautical college. The course tutor Alan Ollerton has some 46 years of experience and at our first meeting that clearly shows. It was good to see a few other friendly faces in Paul and Alan who did the Yachtmaster course last year and are equally as enthusiastic as me in the in the quest to expand their knowledge, with plans to put it into practice in the not too distance future.

The first evening was just a gentle introduction into some of the topics we will be covering on the course and believe you me I am glad we are starting at the shallow end. I am a big fan of GPS, no doubt about it, but I also have a huge passion for what we are about to be taught. Marine electronics have clearly made a large impact on the ability for any person with a basic understanding to make effortless passages safely!

I am intending to use the sextant at every opportunity in recording our passage making. The plan being that I will keep a daily log, which will be based on the manual calculations using the knowledge gained on this course, whilst Jo will be keeping an eye on my progress, using GPS, the agreement being if we are not were I say we are then a simple suggestion or hint should correct my endeavours.

Asking Alan to suggest some reading material to supplement the course was quickly followed by Tom Cunliffe – Ocean Sailing, which came as no surprise, two minutes on Amazon and the book should now be on its way.

House Viewing

We had our first house viewing on Monday night, a couple who have already paid a deposit on another incomplete house on the site. They seemed very impressed and from the discussions our price is reasonable, so I think they are trying to negotiate a deal with the developers. We'll have to wait to see how those turn out, but it suggests that our house is a good deal, so hopefully it's just a matter of time. However, the news on the world financial markets don't seem to be helping house sales at the moment. The estate agent said they will let us know, so for now we wait...
I also spoke to the National Marine Correspondence School to check on the progress on my first assessment, as I have very little time to complete my exam before my subscription expires. The very nice lady that I spoke to in order to change my address, told me not to worry myself about the deadline for completing my Yachtmaster theory course and has given me a two month extension for free. I was very relieved with that and very impressed with their customer service, which is so sadly lacking in many companies these days.

Southampton Boat Show

An excellent weekend was had by all at Southampton Boat Show. We met my parents and their friends Steve and Debs at the gate at opening time after a very early start for our journey’s from North West and North East respectively. We were very excited to get back on board, as will probably be very clear from the last few updates, indeed our guests were struggling to keep up as we progressed over 2 footbridges and across the entire show to reach MI Cats berth on the pontoons. Karen very kindly gave us sometime on the boat uninterrupted to show everyone around.


A very big thumbs up was given by all. I think it is fair to say everyone was overwhelmed by the size, quality and value for money of the Mahe 36. Alex, Kevin’s daughter has given full unreserved approval for her cabin at the port bow and my dad is already making plans for stowing himself away in the anchor locker! Kevin and I really enjoyed the opportunity to show everyone around, it’s great to have so much support for what we are doing. Steve and Debs who have done some sailing before but on monohulls were particularly surprised by some of the benefits of catamarans, especially the salon above water level, the additional space in cabins, cockpit and saloon… so much so they were collecting brochures the next day…!




We did a lot of research over the two days, we visited all of the exhibitors for the kit that we are looking to buy to see all the items we have researched on the internet. We definitely confirmed the Raymarine choice on the electronics. We had a bit of a turnaround on the tender and outboard however, we saw the Zodiac and Honda stands and confirmed the excellent build quality and features of the tender and outboard selected by Kevin previously. However, now we had chance to measure up the boat for storage of a 15hp outboard engine and 3.1m rigid hull inflatable boat. The tender would fit well between the hulls, but we really wanted to make sure that we could remove the outboard for security and to protect it from the elements. Also, all reports we have read and visual evidence suggests that rubber boats do not survive well stored permanently on the back of the boat on davits. Finally, extensive measuring up by Kevin suggested that the outboard would not fit where we were planning. Therefore, we started to turn back to our original idea of buying a tender and outboard which could be deflated and stored. So, when looking on the Honda stand at the tender and outboard deals we decided to go for one of their aluminium slated floor models (with a boat cover) and to get it now, so we can have a play!!

In what seemed like perfect timing after a worrying week of headlines for house sellers about Northern Rock etc, we had a call mid-morning on Saturday to arrange a viewing for our house on Monday night. So, now we could really relax and enjoy the weekend. We all went for dinner with Karen and her partner Paul and Kelly from MI Cats on Saturday night which was a great end to the day. In fact, thanks must go to all at MI Cats for their wonderful hospitality and endless tea through the weekend as we found it hard to tear ourselves away from the Mahe!!

Impatience

There has been a few updates in the last few days which seem to have come quite rapidly, to ease the growing impatience. We had a telephone call on Friday night about Kevin’s Land Rover Defender from a nice man called Rik who was very excited to come and see it. Saturday morning at 9.30 he was on his way here and by Monday lunchtime the banker’s draft was ready. Monday night Kevin and I drove to Chester to deliver the truck. Rik is apparently giving up the corporate lifestyle to move to a remote area of France to try his hand at property development. So, it’s another of our possessions which is going to a great new life.

We have also finally received our Home Energy Assessment report via the addition of the graphs to our house brochure, although it seems that we got a must try harder, grade C (scale A-G). I was rather disappointed as we hoped that this would be a good selling point for the house as it by far the warmest that either of us have lived in. Closer inspection, driving to the estate agents to collect the accompanying report which they did not think to send to us, revealed that apparently the average rating for the UK housing stock is a grade E. Well, perhaps it’s the year on year increases in exam grades setting high expectations (25% A grades I think this year!), but I’m not sure that this will be a great hit with most home owners. Ours was apparently the highest the inspector has yet awarded (79), B grade is 81 and above, which we could have achieved by covering 25% of our roof area in solar panels (approx cost = £4k), for apparently a saving of £29 per year!

After a telephone call to the Energy Inspector, it seems we could never achieve an A grade no matter how much home work we did, as we are downgraded for having 3 external walls of a height of 3 storeys (we are in a 1 year old end terrace townhouse). So presumably, you’d need to live in a flat to get an A. However, the immediate problem is that the vast majority of the house buying public will not be privy to this information especially as ours is the only house at the estate agent which has had a HIP done and as such, we are apparently legally required to display the graphic of the results on the house brochure. I guess the only answer is to provide some text in the brochure to explain the result, so people are not put off by our C grade by a lack of any comparison. I can’t help but feel that there is going to be some serious kick back by the general public when these assessments start being used more widely. To put this into perspective, Kevin has trained at the UK Centre For Alternative Technology, we have 100% low energy light bulbs, A rated appliances and a condensing boiler in our house. We have not once switched on the central heating this winter because the house is so warm and we are still using a summer quilt since last summer. A 1920’s house which the inspector visited last week got a rating of between 20-30 and apparently the inherent way it was built means that it would not be able to improve on this. Having previously lived in a 1920’s house with drafts bad enough to blow my hair whilst standing in the bedroom and permanently cold despite radiators too hot to touch, I can understand the aims of these reports from a global warming perspective but I sense trouble nonetheless…

Finally, I have managed to complete assessment 1 of my RYA Coastal Skipper/ Yachtmaster Theory course to the National Marine Correspondence School for submission. I started the course at the same time as Kevin started his by evening class at Fleetwood Nautical College last year and for a long time it worked really well, we would do our homework independently and cross check. Although, I always said that my chart work was more authentic to navigation on board as I was completing mine on the rickety train across the Pennine’s on my then daily commute from Leeds to Preston. Sadly, work has got in the way with my course, working an average of 12-13 hours per day and catch up too at weekends. Still, I was determined to get my assessment in before my year’s subscription ends and so I can receive the second section of notes. I don’t think with the Southampton Boat Show this weekend that I will manage to complete the course in time, but a re-subscription is cheaper than a week off as I am self employed. So, I may decide to complete the course more leisurely when we get underway. I would say however that I am very impressed with the quality of the course from National Marine Correspondence School and would highly recommend it to anyone considering that option.

So, we finally get to go on board a Mahe again on Saturday, which we are all very excited about to prove this wasn’t all a dream. Plus, it might quieten down Kevin’s almost daily “I want my boat now!” pleading!

RYA Ocean Master

Last night I went to sign up for my RYA Ocean master theory course at the Fleetwood nautical college, which is now booked and the next 6 months on Tuesday night will see me spending 2 hours trying to improve my knowledge and seamanship.

The college normally trains people who are interested making a career out of a life on the ocean wave’s officers of the watch etc, but they also run the RYA courses. The facilities are some of the best in the country.

We are quite lucky to have an absolutely fantastic facility on the door step and have made full use of the professional services offered.

Google exploration

We have noticed how slow the page had become since the addition of the route map so we have removed it to a link, for those that are interested.

During our research we have found a great way to view the route through Google Earth where you can fly to each of our ports of call. This can be saved in a very small file which can be imported into Google Earth as a temporary file, but I haven't quite worked out how we can add that to the blog. However, if anyone would like to see, please send us an email: kevjopenney@googlemail.com.

Other news, our first house viewing did not turn up! After getting in late on Friday, up early on Saturday for the usual cleaning and tidying, we received a call at the time they were due to arrive to say they couldn't make it.

We are on the countdown to Southampton Boat Show now, my parents are booked in to join us there. Really looking forward to seeing the Mahe again and seeing how all of our kit choices will fit in.

Kevin's also been receiving daily downloads of grib (weather) files. He was looking tonight for the Cat 5 storm (Hurricane Felix) approaching the Yucatan pennisula, except...it wasn't on the grib files for today. They were giving nothing more than 30 knot winds in that area, whereas the weather reports are predicting 165 mph (140kts) soon. It would appear from what we can find out that the area affected is quite small at the moment and seems to be below the scale of the grib forecasts. Interesting lesson to take from the sofa rather than from the cockpit I think!

Purposeful Reminder

This blog update comes to you on the move by the wonders of modern communications, via email from my mobile. A few people have asked about updates en route, we certainly will and hopefully far more frequently. It is in fact the reason for the blog, however then it will be via email from our satellite phone.
It is 7pm on Friday night and I am still travelling home after a week away with work in Newcastle. ETA 10pm. I am away usually Mon-Fri but this week was a bit shorter due to the Bank Holiday. I had about 3 hours sleep last night finishing some vital report and I will still have a lot of catching up to do tomorrow. Finally breaking the vacuum seal of hand and eye to laptop to watch the normal people on the train and the lovely late summer evening over Cumbria, I can finally unwind. It takes rare moments of peace like this for me to venture a thought to what we have planned. It's still a feeling of the unknown but boundless to me yet. I have no fear of the change now, but I do have to remind myself of the harder side of the adventure so it's not just an escape from the hard work of today to a dream or idyll to then be later disappointed by the reality.
I suppose that the sound of my working lifestyle probably sounds like reason enough to want to go, but I'd like to think that's it's not as simple as that. I am very successful at what I do, as is Kevin, we could easily continue on this path for years to come, saving the money and counting down to Friday each week. In my mind at least though, I feel like that is itself the reason I can justify giving up the big career to go. I've proven I can do it now and so it is time for a new challenge. If I can make a go of living this life, no reason not to try something new.
Still real life trundles on in the background. Our first viewing at our house tomorrow, they have theirs to sell still though. Also my Rebreather was collected to go to it's new home yesterday too. Kevin's truck is on eBay after frantic polishing in a break in the rain last weekend. So, the To Do list is finally begining to seem achievable.

Weather Forecasting

Probably one of the most important factors to sailing is being able to predict the weather and react accordingly to the circumstances.

On my previous boat, weather was a factor in determining if we went out or not, but enthusiasm also played its part. Looking back it was a bit of a giveaway when the lock gates opened on the flood and we were the only boat venturing out to sea.

Having had various experiences of rough and very lumpy seas, which I will be the first to admit was very unnerving and definitely not what I would class as having fun, and by the way I was not the only one feeling like this.

These experiences have taught me to tame the enthusiasm and become more of a weatherman as well as everything else.

When we first started to look into weather forecasting, we would look at all the normal formats, TV, Radio, synoptic charts, advice from local fishermen, which can be as variable as the weather depending on who you talked to.

We ended up doing some research on the Internet and on advice from other sources to look into ‘Grib Files’, which quickly takes you to a web site by a former weatherman who is also a very keen sailor and understands our requirements – Frank Singleton.

Frank Singleton’s approach to helping other yachtsmen understand the weather and the tools to use is a god send. Talking and learning how to predict the weather is not at the top of my must do list, but as we know a very necessary requirement for all yachtsmen. I am not going to repeat Frank’s words or steal his thunder (pun intended), but instead provide a link to his web site for those of you who are interested.

http://www.franksingleton.clara.net/

One of the well known providers of ‘Grib Files’ is Sailmail, which most of you will know and probably use.

http://www.sailmail.com/

To use gribs you will need a viewer, which is discussed on both Sailmail and Frank Singletons web site, but to keep it easy another link below. I have used both the standard viewer and the one under development. The one under development has a few minor issues, but I ma sure the developers will iron out the wrinkles at some stage.

Grib/Fax Viewer:

http://www.siriuscyber.net/wxfax/



The above grib files are normally downloaded via SSB, in an email format on request, which is great if you don’t have 10 emails in front of the one you really need. Patience is a virtue!

This brings me on to my latest finding, which is a grib viewer and grib downloader, which operates ‘on-demand’, to exactly the area of interest.

We are planning to use ‘Iridium’ for our long range communications, for various reasons, which will appear in a later blog.

This being the case and we know we can still use the Sailmail request feature via ‘Iridium’ and email, but a much more modern approach is by a bunch of American Sailor/ Developers, not sure how to describe them and I certainly don’t want to cause any offence. But again clearly understand the operational requirements!

All I can say is that Grib.US is fantastic, you will need to download the various programs via broadband to install it onto your PC, but once installed and after a very short period of playing and learning, you will master this piece of software. For us the ‘On-demand’ feature will work well with Iridium and you can play with the settings to achieve the amount of data you are willing to download.

For details of Grib.US, either google it or follow the link below, you will be very pleased you did.

http://www.grib.us/

House Sale

I arrived home from work on Wednesday and found the For Sale board up outside our house which was an exciting moment. I am sure everyone will agree that selling a house is rarely a pleasurable experience, but it is a significant milestone which I am very keen to pass as it is the last one which could delay our departure.

The photos have been taken and the brochure details approved. The final detail to start the marketing was our Home Energy Assessment which consists on an inspector visiting the house to assess the energy efficiency of the house. This is a new requirement in England when selling a house that the vendor is required to provide a Home Information Pack for reference to the potential buyers consisting of the Energy Assessment, Survey and Local Searches. This came into force for 4 bedroom houses this month and for 3 bedroom houses on 12th September. It has not been a popular implementation and was delayed earlier in the summer due to a lack of energy assessors - they must be still thin on the ground, as we could only book ours for a Sunday afternoon on a Bank Holiday weekend. Our house is a new three storey townhouse and is very energy efficient, so we are hoping that this may actually be a selling point. Although, I suspect it is only putting numbers and graphs to a point which common sense has told people for years – that old houses are colder. However people still buy them for the character and period features etc and they often regard new houses as “characterless”. I was converted new houses after living in a 1930’s house with character but drafts strong enough to blow your hair and heating bills enough to turn it grey.

So, fingers crossed for viewings from next week and an early offer. I think the price should be right for a relatively quick sale and then we will move into rental accommodation until it’s time to go. So a few weeks of living as tidily as possible just in case the agents bring anyone over, we have left them a key to arrange the viewings. Although, everyone keeps telling me recently that I look like Kirsty Allsopp from the property sales show Location, Location so perhaps I am missing a great marketing opportunity for the house by not doing the viewings ourselves!

Decluttering

Well round two of eBay sales is now over, 5 parcels sent yesterday and another few to go tomorrow. Our experience has been very positive on the whole, most people pay within minutes of the end of the auction and we have had a few items sell for more than we paid!

This time we have a number of items for collection which has been quite amusing. We had just sat down with Kevin’s brother Phil yesterday as two people turned up at the same time to collect ladders and a camping table. Our guest was very amused by our ongoing garage sale! We are due another 4 people this evening from all over the local area to collect dive cylinders, camping stoves etc. It’s interesting to meet the people who buy your things and inevitably it comes to a conversation about what it is we are doing that we are selling everything off. We even had one guy who was peering in the garage to see what else was on offer!

Our other great find has been Amazon used books, we found it inadvertently when copying a description to post some books onto eBay. It takes about 30 seconds to list each one and you can see the lowest price currently on offer. Alex was very impressed with it and sat and listed 52 books for us. Within 4 days we have sold 17 already and most non-fiction books go for about 60% of the new price so it’s a bit more to the kitty.

It’s funny to think of our belongings be reused in this way, some have even gone to a much better life. Our tent is headed to Ullapool tomorrow, a beautiful town on the far north west of Scotland, ironically where we ourselves took it to catch the ferry to go camping in the Western Isles two years ago. In another strange twist, our Build Your Own House book has gone to a guy living on the island of Rousay in the Orkney Isles of Scotland - a place we once looked at buying a building plot. Finally, we have also inadvertently in this auction sold two lots to friends of ours, we didn’t realise until we went to send the invoice. Again, it’s nice to think of people getting further use out of them, however, I also wonder whether theirs like ours is full of good intentions, but ultimately spend more time in the garage than in use. One thing for certain, I don’t feel any regret at decluttering our lives a little more. Listing everything out certainly makes you realise how many things you waste your money on for a few moments of enjoyment. I’m certainly looking forward to owning only as much will fit in our boat!

So, we are gradually clearing a bit of space, we didn’t manage to do everything we planned this week, but we are a step closer.

Inspiration

This blog entry is dedicated to the memory of Kevin’s father Frank Penney who has been the main inspiration behind our trip and who lost his fight against cancer last night at 4am.

Frank was diagnosed with liver and lung cancer over a year ago only a few months short of retirement, having had barely a day of sickness his entire working life. It came as a shock to everyone in someone so fit and healthy and made us both think about the preciousness of life and the vital importance to make the most of each moment we have. Kevin had also lost his mother Brenda when she was only 39 years old due to a heart condition, so this news was really the final push to for us to start making definite plans.

Frank showed the steely determination for which he (and his sons) are known and put up a fight not expected in any of the textbooks. He received chemotherapy to reduce the tumours but we were told they could not be treated, but he continued on with life even taking a holiday to Cyprus with his partner Rose. However, recently he was diagnosed with further tumours in his brain which caused quite a rapid deterioration in his condition despite his continued fight. The last three weeks Frank was between hospital and his home and had an opportunity to finalise his affairs and say his goodbyes. It was through one night at home which Kevin spent with him that they talked through the details of our trip in the early hours, showing him pictures of the boat and reading the details of the ocean currents and trade winds from the Atlantic Islands Pilot guide. He was amused with our choice of boat name – Invincible – he & Kevin are both keen historians, particularly military. The boat name came to Kevin the day we walked down the jetty to hand over the keys to our previous beloved boat which had given us our first taste of adventure. It was a very emotional day, on which later in our favourite restaurant we got engaged.

The day after next, Frank could not be woken and was taken back to Wigan General Hospital by ambulance. Kevin was with Frank later after he had regained consciousness and the consultant came round to see him and ask him if he could remember coming round in the ambulance. Frank’s response was that he thought he had been sailing across the Atlantic, this was a special moment to us and brings tears to my eyes even now as I write this to think that he will be with us in spirit on our trip and that perhaps the thought of it gave him some relief and comfort.

Our boat name was dedicated to Frank, to a love of history and we think gives a touch of irony too on a 36 footer! Frank asked about it again on another recent visit but had remembered it as Indefatigable, which again seemed entirely apt as Frank continued to fight through the terrible pain of his condition. So we decided that had better be the name of our tender, I hope that Zodiac and Honda will live up to the name!

Frank Penney
25/09/1941 – 17/08/2007
May he rest in peace

Factory Visit SMP

We arrived at the SMP factory early in the afternoon, called in at reception, who put a call out for their sales executive Ross Connelly, who promptly turned up at the reception to give us a tour round the factory.



We explained what our interest was with their organisation and a brief description of what we were looking for and the intended use of the equipment.

Our first impression of the setup was very good, the factory was very clean and tidy and first contact with the company via reception was friendly, which these days is a very rare.

We were escorted to the area where the portable compressors were located and Ross then pulled a few of them of the racks to allow me to measure up the external dimensions, due to the fact that we intend to keep the compressor stored in one of the engine bays for transport and pulled out into the cockpit area for charging cylinders.

There were various models based on a similar vein, the main difference being the drive unit, petrol or electrical and how the unit was guarded. The guards made a fairly big difference in physical dimensions. We know we have limited access to the engine bay, so the main feature for us was to have the unit as compact as possible. It became quickly obvious, which compressor would be the correct choice.



Ross then showed us round the stores department, with specific interest in the area they have setup for holding spares for the compressor we were interested in. Wow, imagine a perfect row of racking, which was full of storage bins correctly labelled up and every bin contained a large number of spares. They clearly mean to look after their customers in the supply of spare parts for the equipment they sell. Every credit to them!



We were given the latest brochures and price list for spare parts and noticed that they did a stainless steel version, which was an additional £200.00. A brief discussion followed about VAT as we would effectively be exporting the equipment offshore. On proof of leaving the EU within 6 months of purchase, we would be credited with the VAT payment to our account.

Sell Up & Sail

Today the first estate agent came to value our house, which commenced a frantic hour of dashing around cleaning and tidying this morning. We bought on a new estate and had thought that buying early in the release would be a good investment. However, the prices haven’t gone up in the year since we bought, I guess our timing to sell though is not ideal, the full site will only complete in December this year which would probably have a better effect on price.

So we were a bit disappointed on the valuation, no loss, but no gain either, we are trapped around the stamp duty boundary which makes profits difficult. Anyway, we have another valuation booked for Friday morning, so I guess we’ll see what they say. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, buying this nice new bigger house was supposed to settle us down make us happier to stay in the rat race a little longer - then we hadn’t really justified to ourselves that we could go sooner rather than later. In that respect it worked, we have had another year’s earning and saving now, but we realise we fell into the peer pressure / marketing trap which sees so many people in masses of debt now. Kevin has been through the entire buying big houses trap and had come out of the other side to downsize before we met. Then when I sold my house and we got somewhere together I decided we needed the spare room for guests etc etc. Then getting up everyday at 5am to commute from Preston to Leeds returning at 8pm kicked in and the only other people up earlier than I was were those in the even bigger houses. So I admit now I was wrong, there is more to life than this. Kevin just had his 2 year old LandRover Defender valued too, don’t even get us started on the waste of buying expensive cars! To think that on a boat you can pretty much live on what people lose in depreciation on their cars is a revelation that most people don’t wake up to I guess.

Also, the ongoing eBay selling, we currently have 28 items listed and just discovered a few books etc this morning to start adding. It is a great service and will probably add a fair bit to the pot which would have been lost just giving things away. However, it is very time consuming, Alex is with us this week and has been brilliant working really hard to get everything listed and answer all of the questions you get including…
[Oxygen/Helium Analyser] Does this analyse Oxygen too?
[3.4m Ladders] Can you post them?
We aren’t complaining, some things have sold for more than we paid for them and it’s keeping us amused guessing the daft questions we might get!

Tender and Outboard

Having now read quite a few other web sites and blogs about people sailing round the world, one thing they all say and have in common is that the tender to the mother ship is a vital piece of equipment and has a large list of duties to perform.

Also they all seem to share the same fate as the journey and time progresses, which is delaminating of the material and the glue dissolves on the joints due to the UV rays from the sun.

We have decided to make a basic ‘rule’ for all of our equipment, which is that anything we buy from a manufacturer, must be capable of being repaired or service parts supplied to us, wherever we are in the world. This is a fair statement, but comes with a very high price tag. Time will only tell if this is a wise policy.

The tender, we have decided to go for the Zodiac Yachtline 310R, which basically is a small RIB and looking at the technical data only weighs 50KG, as against the 310S having inflatable floor with wooden slats weighing in at 42KG.



For us a small RIB will be great for all the usual yachting roles, but it will come into its own for scuba diving and when we are anchored off a reef and do not want to get any closer with the Mahe, but still have the need to drop and pickup divers closer to the chosen dive site.



The picture above is a Bahia, sporting a Zodiac 310R

The Zodiacs come with a 5 year guarantee and have a world wide presence, so that fits our buying ‘rule’.

The outboard, again the most common complaint I am picking up from other yachtsmen is that they always wished they had a bigger and more powerful outboard. The technical data on the Zodiac says the largest engine that should be used with the 310R is 15 horse power.

In the UK, there is a trend with commercial fishermen, who are using small fishing vessels of less than 8 meters in length to use the Honda outboard or a pair of them. I personally know a few of these guys and on having any conversations about outboards they are all unanimous about which one to choose, they all swore by Honda, which for me is the best endorsement any product can get. These people rely on them for a living, that’s good enough for me!

Booking Tickets

Today we have been onto the Southampton boat show web site to ‘book online’, which would allow us to get the combi-ticket at a cheaper price than for paying for 2 individual days. We are planning on going on both the Saturday and Sunday with a lot of research to complete.

Should be a relatively simple task to fill in one form for the tickets, it was, but the page just does not accept your payment without a customer ‘URN’ number.

How do you get a ‘URN’ number, you must pay for the tickets via our web site and we will send you your ‘URN’ number with your order, Ah, I see the logic now, of course its me I am stupid.

Whilst I am on the phone, do you accept orders over the phone, yes you do, great, let’s do that then. I am a great believer in keeping it simple.

I am amazed at how many times this happens to me, placing orders over the internet, does no one check their programming anymore. Especially where financial transactions are involved, makes me wonder just how secure paying via a web page which does not work anyway, really is, rant over.

Technical Drawing

I am trying to get hold of the outside profile technical drawing in CAD format, preferable AutoCAD from Fountain-Pajot. I have currently got a PDF, which shows the standard layout and the optional extras in light blue.



The reason I would like this is so that I can accurately design a transom arch, which I intend to have manufactured in high quality stainless steel, incorporating the standard FP solid centre board.

Hopefully, when I do the factory visit in October I will be able to get my hands on the drawing, otherwise I will be measuring the boat in September at the Southampton boat show and attempt to design from my measurements and photographs.

If anyone would like a copy of the PDF, which allows you to zoom in on the detail, then please drop me an email and I will forward you the file.

Heavy weather planning

Planning for the inevitable heavy weather at sea is great sat inside a house on a nice sunny day, thinking it won’t happen to me, ha ha…..

Having had previous experience of heavy weather at sea, then planning what will be a very real situation before you know it is worth every effort and is time well spent before the going gets tough, which at some point it will.

After reading various forums and no end of articles about planning for heavy weather tactics, I have found a product, which I am happy with, being from an engineering background, I am a firm believer in product development and a tool, which has been designed for a specific purpose.

I am more than impressed with the ‘sea brake’ this is a product, which has been designed for assisting with heavy weather tactics at sea. When the going starts to get tough and the dark clouds are gathering on the horizon and a sense of impending doom is upon you, I don’t want to deploy a ‘builder’s bag’ and hope for the best, knowing that for the sake of half a days pay I can have a product, which is designed for the job.

I don’t mind spending the money on something, hopefully, I will never use, but, and there is always a but, a bit of insurance and planning not to fail, in my mind is a precaution I am prepared to spend some hard earned cash on.

I won’t try and explain the ‘sea brake’, just go to the web site and see for yourself.

http://www.seabrake.com

I think it’s a brilliant piece of kit and it will be part of my planning for a day or days of ‘big’ seas.

This should please our Australian audience as it is a product from down under, we have already at this stage had a couple of Aussie watchers, G’day mate, don’t be shy and drop us an email, hope you like what we are doing and you never know on the way round we could meet up!

Site Update

We have now updated the site to allow people to add comments. So please feel free to add comments on what we are writing about.

Plus we have added our sponsored links shortcut. These are people and companies who are interested in what we are doing and are prepared to help us with our adventure.

Sail Plan

This weekend we have been researching the sail plan of the boat, as standard the boat comes with the main sail and a genoa. Fountaine Pajot also offers as an additional extra the ‘Spifurl’, which is a new design between them and Incidences, who are the factory supplier of the main and genoa sail.

We have as yet not seen the ‘Spifurl’, but are guessing that it will be some sort of cross between a gennaker and a screecher, this also requires the additional bowsprit and accompanying equipment. The main use of the sail will predominantly be for down wind sailing.

Other options for down wind sailing is the ‘Parasail’, which seems to be growing in popularity being that 20 boats in the 2006 ARC had one fitted.

This seems to be a very useful addition to a sail plan giving that the manufacture states that this can be used from 60 to 180 degrees and has all the features and benefits of a spinnaker and gennaker combined, claiming it to be all-in-one sail.

The accompanying picture shows a cat using the ‘Parasail’, we will be looking up the British distributor and having a chat to them at the Southampton Boat Show.

To Do List started!

As part of our plans for the trip round we are planning to do as much diving as we can, as our intended route takes in many of the top diving spots in the world. We are both rebreather divers but have decided that it isn't going to be possible to dive with these all round the world due to requirement for 100% Oxygen gas and sofnalime which will be a lot of hassle to arrange in remote locations. So we are going to go back to basics and return to single cylinder scuba diving and buy a compressor for the boat giving us unlimited diving wherever we are. Infact Parcelforce came today to pick up Kevin's rebreather to go to it's new owner!

We had a long debate about about the dangers of storing petrol on board and the possibility of using electric powered off the engine. However, we have plumped for the petrol option on the assumption that we will need an petrol outboard engine too for the tender. So it looks like being MCH6/SH - 3.5cfm Honda Petrol Compressor, to hopefully fit in the engine bay. We need to do some measurements during the Southampton Boat Show or our Factory visit to check before we can order.

Meanwhile we both have a week off in two weeks time when we will be planning to sell our house and contents, Kevin's truck, sort out our Pensions, decorate the hall and find somewhere to new to live! We officially have our To Do list now and there is alot to do!

Compressors

It’s Saturday morning and we are researching compressors, which we can take with us and use on the boat.

Some of the features we are looking for is small and compact, reliable and has a world wide access to spare parts.

We are planning on using 15 litre cylinders on our way round, this will allow us to partially fill the cylinders without charging them up to the full 232 bar, this should reduce the stress on the compressor and hopefully make it last a bit longer, anyway that’s the plan.

Without to much trouble we had a short list within about an hour of research, the two models in question are the Bauer and the Coltri Sub, both models are powered by the same Honda petrol engine.

Both claim to be reliable and have world wide service and are very compact with similar charging times for the same size cylinder, so it only left the price and one model came out much cheaper than the other and was available from a local supplier to us, who has been in the industry for some time.

I intend to go to the company and have a chat about the model we are interested in.

The Coltri Sub



The Bauer



Will let you know how I get on with the factory vist.

Paperwork

Not much to report today, two things getting the boat on the register of British Ships and the 'Sail Away Scheme', which should allow you to buy a boat and sail it out of the EU, without having to pay the VAT.

The first one went smoothly, we now have our Certificate of British Registry and with it our number, which is SSR129810, which at the first opportunity will be proudly displayed on the hull.

The second one was not quite as smooth, but we think we have an answer, without having to sail the boat back to the UK to complete the VAT exemption and all the paper work, in triplicate of course, before allowed to continue on route.

With the help of Carl from M.I Cats and the manufacturer Fountaine Pajot, we can have the boat from the factory including VAT exempt documentation for a reasonable sum, which we will take. Just like to point out that on the site for the 'Sail Away Scheme' that it says either from the UK or member state, but alas after a phone call to HM customs, who insist that it is only from the UK and no buts!

Carl thank you for your help, it is much appreciated.

Factory Options.

We now need to start to think what factory options we would like to have fitted to the boat. Below is a list of considered options:

Bowsprit and its gear, which is supply and fit composite pole, furler and winch, furler line circuit led to cockpit, sheets and blocks and additional winch on the mast.

Spifurl, which is I am reliably informed is a new design of a downwind sail between Fountain-Pajot and sail loft INCIDENCES whose advantage is that it can replace the GENNAKER and the SPINNAKER, the mounting is on a swivel.

220 volt main system, which incorporates a shore power cord, the feed to 1 charger supplying the bank of house batteries, 4 outlet sockets split between the saloon and cabins and the feed to the water heater.

12 to 220 volt 500 watt inverter feed from the bank of house batteries with 2 power outlets.

Lazy Bag threaded onto the boom, suspended from lazy jacks.

Epoxy, antifouling, plus commissioning in La Rochelle.

Well that should be enough of the factory options, but we still need a list of extras, which seems to be getting longer by the day, but more about that later.

Electronic Instruments

We have received our official order confirmation from M.I. Cats, which now means we now need to start to plan on what additional extras we need on fitting out the boat.

On the sea trial, the demo boat was fitted with the now standard factory fitted Furuno electronic instruments, which did not strike us as an improvement over what we have come used to, which is the Raymarine ST60 electronic instruments, the first and most obvious problem we had was with the wind indicator only showed the usual true and apparent wind direction and with no indication given to the wind speed as seen on the Raymarine ST60, so it did not take long to decide that we would stick with what we know and we would be fitting Raymarine instruments, after all, our last boat had Raymarine electronics and we never had a single problem with them, so stick with what you know. Plus it seems Raymarine has just updated the ST60 range, which is now called the ST60 Plus.


We will also be fitting an autopilot and the Raymarine ST6002 with the usual additions of the corepack and the drive unit will do nicely.

Technology...

Today I have been finding out about GMDSS LRC and Iridium communications, which don't come cheap, one of the main aims apart from safety and communications is the ability to download grib files via wireless communications. Plus the ability to send emails to stay in touch with our families without paying through the nose, there are a number of companies offering this as a product and a service.

Anyway just to say there is no shortage on the internet of people offering wireless communications. One thing is clear and that is we will need to do the GMDSS LRC course, which seems to be about 4 to 5 days with an exam at the end.

So, we would like to achieve the following:

Down loading GRIB files for weather analysis.
The ability to email our friends and family and receive emails of course.
Update our blog site via email, whilst on route at sea.
Well this is the first test of the technology, which is updating this blog from an email post.

Fingers crossed.

Mahe 36 Sea Trial, Chichester

Our day started very early with a 4.30 alarm, or it would have if we hadn't been so excited that we were already awake and eating breakfast by then. The day of our sea trial of a Mahe 36 made by Fountaine Pajot, the boat which after many months of research we had chosen for our round the world sailing adventure, all we needed now was to actually try it. After a mere 5 hour drive we would finally get to step aboard and better still head out and stretch her sea legs.

After several years of trying and failing to find a route out of the rat race we had finally decided to stop looking, take some time out and see the world, then worry about what we will do when we finish (if we finish) with hopefully a much better outlook of the world. Once we'd made that decision we really just needed to make the commitment and make it happen. We already had a deadline, March 31st 2008, the end of Kevin's current contract and now our wedding day too, because we really don't do things by halves. So now we have 9 months to buy a boat, sell a house and all contents, two cars, hand in my notice, oh and organise our Wedding / Leaving party. The trip was planned well before the wedding, then about 2 weeks ago Kevin quite spontaeously proposed in our favorite restaurant, so now we have quite the most amazing honeymoon planned. So, there was a lot riding on today, we really had to make a decision on a boat and get a delivery date (we found out there was an 11 month wait which could leave us waiting for two months) as we'd really set our hearts on setting straight off after the wedding.

We were meeting Karen from M.I. Cats at Chichester Harbour at 10.30 to go down to their demonstrator model followed by a sea trial later in the afternoon at high water. We were on the road before 5am and so managed to arrive in the lovely town of Emsworth for a tea and snack by 9.30. Conversation was dominated by Kevin's discovery of a 5000 Euro price hike on the Mahe the day before which had been posted on YachtWorld.com. It was a pretty big blow because we'd been in email contact trying to arrange a date to see the boat for about 6 weeks and so felt we'd unfairly missed out on the old price. We'd really begun to question our plan to buy a new boat, it's easy to dismiss 5k on top of a 168k Euro base price, but we'd started to measure the cost of everything in terms of how long it would last on our trip and 5,000 Euro was three months of sailing or a complete set of boat electronics. So we were just hoping that we could persuade M.I. Cats to let us take it at the lower price.

At 10am we headed over to Chichester Harbour to meet Karen and head over to the boat. We had seen the demonstrator quite by chance a couple of months before when viewing another boat in the area and had been amazed by the size and sturdiness of the appearance, in fact we hadn't even recognised it as a Mahe at first. We were so impressed that from that day the Mahe reached the top of the list and the Athena 38 or Lavezzi 40 the previous favourites were back up options in the event of an unfavourable sea trial.

We were grinning from ear to ear as Karen stepped aside to let us on board and we finally got look around, this may not have been best tactic for our later negotiations but as we both agreed later we'd pretty much both decided at that point anyway. We headed into the saloon and were amazed at the size, the pictures we'd been pouring over for weeks had made it appear much smaller than it actually was, which again we both just kept repeating whilst grinning to Karen. Then we were all over the boat like it was Christmas, in all the cabins and lockers, "look at this", "look at this", all pretence of impartiality now gone.

The Mahe 36 is built more as a family cruiser than it's predecessors which are really designed more for the charter market often with ensuite heads (toilets) to each of four double cabins, great for 8 people on a one week holiday but not the best use of space for 2 people for 2-3 years. The Mahe has 3 double cabins and a full size heads, taking the equivalent of a full cabin, creating a great "Master" hull with King-size cabin and shower with full standing height access. Add to that 6'3" headroom all round and all sheets lead to the helm for easier short-handed sailing, separate engine lazarettes and still with all round visibility from the saloon at deck level leading to a fantastic cockpit with loads of seating and a double helm seat, it felt like it had been built with us in mind.

Carl from M.I. Cats

We'd been finally converted to catamarans after a week's charter of an Athena 38 from Gosport this Easter where we'd instantly seen the benefits of a level stable platform, visibility all round from the saloon and galley, lower draught, increased speed and better maneourvability from two engines. Easily the best sailing we'd ever done, the sheer joy of not having to hang on to prepare food and move around. We were just so ridiculously over excited by that all week, because now not only were we going to sail around the world but it was actually going to be comfortable and enjoyable rather than just merely a challenge, fantastic to achieve but pretty gruelling whilst it lasts.

So, now it was just a sea trial and the price to be negotiated, we headed off for lunch to digest the updated price lists that Karen had given us, also the news that she had previously tried and failed to get another customer an order through on the old price. The good news however, was that the newer boats had some upgrades to them - Spifurl (screecher) sails instead of gennaker, volvo engine management console, white gel coat in the salon in place of battleship grey, electric fuel gauge and two hatches in the front windows. These were all changes which we would have made if able, we'd be pleased to get the newer looking model to reduce future depreciation, better yet the factory had started a double shift and we could now get the boat on our chosen date of the first week of April 2008. So you can see now how we started to justify the increase in budget to ourselves, though we trolled through the prices of options and recalculated our previous figures. Kevin was still determined to get the lower price and so we headed back early from lunch for Kevin to start the haggling, whilst I had another look round, being completely rubbish at those sort of negotiations.

Karen was slightly surprised by our unusual approach of price negotiations before the sea trial but after a few calls to France and to Carl one of M.I. Cat Directors we'd reached a deal subject to sea trial. We were pretty sure that this would be fine after all we had read from forums of current owners and following our Athena experiences. So Carl headed over and we head out to sea. It was quite a gusty day so ideal from our perspective to really see what she was like. As we were pointing to wind, we set up 2 reefs then dropped the sail before motoring out. It was very similar to the Athena and was done in a matter of moments. Carl took the helm to take us out of the harbour and through the very narrow lockgates at Chichester, now on flow through. We headed out down the channel, having already agreed that we would not be allowed to the open sea as the wind speed was now gusting 25+ knots and sea conditions were rough outside. I think it is company policy not to risk a bad review by scaring the potential customer, we wouldn't have minded but could understand their perspective and agreed to a 2-3 hour sail up the channel and back.


Jo at the helm

Kevin took the helm as soon as we were out of the mooring area near the entrance. Carl set the main with 2 reefs and a reefed genoa and we set off close hauled as soon as we were able to make 40 degrees to the wind, we were at 6 knots as we eased the engine into neutral. We were amazed by how high it pointed, this not being a great quality of the Athena or cats in general. I took the helm so Kevin could have a look around. There followed a great 3 hours of sailing that flew by, we managed several points of sail as we wound down the estuary and finished up downwind hitting 9 knots briefly on the way back. She handled really well and and made little notice of the choppy albeit sheltered conditions. We were now both utterly convinced and so headed back with Carl and Karen to hand over our cheque for the deposit. We'd done it, there was no turning back now! Delivery April 2008 with a factory visit in October.