It's 9 weeks until Kevin finishes work and 9 weeks and 2 days until we arrive in La Rochelle to collect our boat!
I think that the To Do list is going well, but I'm sure there are things we've forgotten. We went to Mailspeed Marine at the weekend in Warrington and bought most of our safety kit for the delivery.
I had foolishly been looking forward to it and had done alot of price comparisons to decide on Mailspeed. The shop being only about 40 minutes from us we decided to go in person and save delivery which for flares, liferafts etc is considerable. The foolish part to my enthusiasm was to expect customer service to be anything but aggravating. I have spent my youth in hundreds of part time service jobs and feel qualified to say that good customer service is not that hard. Most customers do not expect grovelling merely politeness and attention, e.g. Not talking to your mate on the next till and conversely those customers who continue mobile conversations should also expect rudeness in return. Therefore, starting to serve us for a £1000 liferaft then wandering off despite being told we had a long list of other stuff to get, telling us that x is looking after us then ignoring us for 20 minutes when clearly no one is coming in order to spend time selling someone a 50p valve. The first person to respond to our requests being the Saturday boy who despite being pleasant is clueless. To stand and watch when the shop is now empty in groups of 2 or 3 chatting whilst we struggle on is fairly clearly not endearing behaviour especially as I am clearly most annoyed (hmm maybe this was the problem,too scarey face).
Then to gladly admit that all stock on several items is at the London Boat Show so we have to drive an 80 minute round trip to fetch them next week. Arrgh yes I know I should have shouted the shop down and demanded to see the manager and I can live without the emails of instructions on complaining. It's more the ruining of the experience I begrudge, this was our first big in person shopping trip to buy tangible kit for our new boat to take us round the world- it should have been fun. If I wanted hassle, stress and aggravation I'll go to work or get a train from Preston to Leeds during the floods, don't get of started again!
Anyway! The rest of the weekend went extremely well. Kevin managed to fit the cradle to the new liferaft and we managed another big garage clearance thanks to our fantastic ebay administer Alex. So now we are back to the stupid questions time of posting 2.5m ladders etc but I guess now I have said all that about customer service I better be nice!
There was a nice end to the weekend when we had a lovely comment on our last blog update from Gregor Tarjan, the author of the Catamaran book we had just bought. I think it only fair to finish reading it before writing the review, but suffice to say for now we are both fighting over it to read it from cover to cover. As scientist and engineer we have both been very pleased to finally explain the why as well as the what, with excellent explanations of the principles of Catamaran design and sailing.
Friday 25 January 2008
Wednesday 23 January 2008
Liferaft
This weekend was spent collecting our new safety equipment for the boat from a local chandlery. We wanted a 6 man Liferaft, which conformed to the latest safety code for blue water cruisers.
After some internet searching and reading lots of manufacturer’s details, we opted to go for the Seago ISO 9650–1, which came with a stainless steel cradle.
I intend to store the Liferaft under the helm seat, in an upright position, as pictured. Having seen the Liferaft storage option available for FP decided against it, as I think it definitely looks like an after thought.
Plus like kids in a sweet shop, we spent quite a large sum of money on mostly safety equipment, flares RORC pack, fire extinguisher, fire blanket, medical kit etc…
All to easy, but as I kept telling Jo, we need it, my excuse anyway!
After some internet searching and reading lots of manufacturer’s details, we opted to go for the Seago ISO 9650–1, which came with a stainless steel cradle.
I intend to store the Liferaft under the helm seat, in an upright position, as pictured. Having seen the Liferaft storage option available for FP decided against it, as I think it definitely looks like an after thought.
Plus like kids in a sweet shop, we spent quite a large sum of money on mostly safety equipment, flares RORC pack, fire extinguisher, fire blanket, medical kit etc…
All to easy, but as I kept telling Jo, we need it, my excuse anyway!
Friday 18 January 2008
Shopping
Well another early morning start on the train and another blog update. Preparations are continuing a pace now. Most excitingly with a confirmed delivery date for the boat of 28th March! I have also managed over Christmas to book cheap flights to La Rochelle every weekend whilst Kev is there commissioning, de-snagging and hopefully conducting sea trials on our boat.
He will be joined by able assistant and daughter Alex during school easter half term for a week, before I fly out again for 2 weeks vacation to do the delivery trip.
The next few weeks then is the start of some fairly major spending. Starting this weekend with safety kit for fitting prior to the delivery. After quite alot of internet browsing it looks as though the nearest big chandlery Mailspeed Marine is the best bet for our shopping trip on Saturday. We will be buying liferaft (Seago ISO), radar reflectors, life buoys, flares etc.
We are also hoping to put in an order on the electronics this weekend too. We'd originally planned to have these fitted for us by a company in La Rochelle arranged by our broker. Primarily this was because we were originally both finishing in March and we wanted to get the boat useable as quickly as possible. Now with this great new boat deal we have, we get sufficient electronics for the delivery trip thrown in. Although these are Furuno and we wanted Raymarine, analysis of manuals on the internet suggests we can easily swap the displays later. Therefore we are now buying the electronics ourselves potentially from the States and Kevin will fit them later. We fitted the same model ourselves on our last boat, so this way we also know that it will be done to his exacting standards.
I think therefore, that by the end of the weekend we will be another step further forward.
We also got an excellent book yesterday on Cruising Catamarans by Gregor Tarjan, the latest edition, which has been a long time to be available, but first impressions are it was worth the wait and is packed with very detailed information with lots of technical detail but also lots of beautiful photos.
He will be joined by able assistant and daughter Alex during school easter half term for a week, before I fly out again for 2 weeks vacation to do the delivery trip.
The next few weeks then is the start of some fairly major spending. Starting this weekend with safety kit for fitting prior to the delivery. After quite alot of internet browsing it looks as though the nearest big chandlery Mailspeed Marine is the best bet for our shopping trip on Saturday. We will be buying liferaft (Seago ISO), radar reflectors, life buoys, flares etc.
We are also hoping to put in an order on the electronics this weekend too. We'd originally planned to have these fitted for us by a company in La Rochelle arranged by our broker. Primarily this was because we were originally both finishing in March and we wanted to get the boat useable as quickly as possible. Now with this great new boat deal we have, we get sufficient electronics for the delivery trip thrown in. Although these are Furuno and we wanted Raymarine, analysis of manuals on the internet suggests we can easily swap the displays later. Therefore we are now buying the electronics ourselves potentially from the States and Kevin will fit them later. We fitted the same model ourselves on our last boat, so this way we also know that it will be done to his exacting standards.
I think therefore, that by the end of the weekend we will be another step further forward.
We also got an excellent book yesterday on Cruising Catamarans by Gregor Tarjan, the latest edition, which has been a long time to be available, but first impressions are it was worth the wait and is packed with very detailed information with lots of technical detail but also lots of beautiful photos.
Thursday 10 January 2008
Update time again
It's a particularly grey morning, the sky is leaden and the rain is constant. It has been a good week for travel though only one night away for me. I'm at a meeting all day only 5 minutes drive from Kevin's work so we had a very pleasant drive to work together. The rivers were near to bursting all along our route this morning and I have to say that the feeling of leaving behind the grey and wet this morning is nothing short of euphoric. It's the 10th of January already and the time is just rushing by.
Last weekend we arranged Ship's Radio Licences and International Certificate of Competence (ICC) for Kevin, like an International Driving licence for boats, needed in European waters and although a relatively low level of qualification more recognised than our RYA qualifications. I have also arranged our first appointment for immunisations for Friday. The required list is rather long and thanks to a tip off from Jonny we are starting now in order to be able to get the necessary 6 month boosters required for those such as Hepatitis B to extend the immunity sufficiently for our trip. Certain immunisations required are not available on the NHS and will need to be obtained from private clinics. I found the MCA website was very useful, they also provide a copy of a Ship's Medical Guide for free download, 12 chapters covering all sorts of medical emergencies and care when away from land.
Other discoveries have been Skype. Our good friends Jill and Ross who are out in New Zealand following their wedding last summer have been using it to keep so touch with people at home. The video calls using webcam are particularly good way to feel like you are really keeping in touch. I have recruited to whole family onto it in preparation! There is also a feature we are investigating to set up a UK landline number which forwards calls to your Skype account for those relatives who are not online for about £30 per year. If you are not on line when they call you can even get the calls forwarded to say a local pay-as-you-go mobile, however you then pay for the forwarded call albeit at reasonable Skype rates. You can also add a voice mail facility I believe at additional cost.
Last weekend we arranged Ship's Radio Licences and International Certificate of Competence (ICC) for Kevin, like an International Driving licence for boats, needed in European waters and although a relatively low level of qualification more recognised than our RYA qualifications. I have also arranged our first appointment for immunisations for Friday. The required list is rather long and thanks to a tip off from Jonny we are starting now in order to be able to get the necessary 6 month boosters required for those such as Hepatitis B to extend the immunity sufficiently for our trip. Certain immunisations required are not available on the NHS and will need to be obtained from private clinics. I found the MCA website was very useful, they also provide a copy of a Ship's Medical Guide for free download, 12 chapters covering all sorts of medical emergencies and care when away from land.
Other discoveries have been Skype. Our good friends Jill and Ross who are out in New Zealand following their wedding last summer have been using it to keep so touch with people at home. The video calls using webcam are particularly good way to feel like you are really keeping in touch. I have recruited to whole family onto it in preparation! There is also a feature we are investigating to set up a UK landline number which forwards calls to your Skype account for those relatives who are not online for about £30 per year. If you are not on line when they call you can even get the calls forwarded to say a local pay-as-you-go mobile, however you then pay for the forwarded call albeit at reasonable Skype rates. You can also add a voice mail facility I believe at additional cost.
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