4 weeks today and counting!! It is all still slightly surreal to be honest, it’s still hard to imagine when you are feeling as if you are running at 100mph to think that sometime soon life will start to slow down. It’s still hard to imagine floating around the Caribbean in the sun this time next year particularly in the thick frost of the last week in England! We are both just so excited to get back out on the water having been boatless for some time now.
Kevin goes for his visit to the factory to take photos accompanied now with a friend from his Yachtmaster Ocean course, Paul. We will then have three weekends more together before we go to collect the boat! We are beginning to pack up the house too, because we need to get everything over to France that we plan to take with us or at least those I won’t need between now and August. We are dividing our possessions between the house and the boat, all DVDs are packed up in a zip up case (cases too much room to carry!), Kevin gets the crockery and cutlery and iPod and I get the house stereo and camping gear! As I’m away most of the week with work in hotels, we need everything we need on the boat rather than buy duplicates of everything after spending so many months trying to declutter our lives. We have had to upgrade our ferry ticket to a van since changing our plan back to travel straight to the Canaries with the boat and I have had to find a van hire company which allows hire from the UK to include France. Think we are getting there with all the preparations.
Sunday, 2 March 2008
Saturday, 16 February 2008
Making Way...
Well things are progressing and time is flying by, I have just booked the flights to go and see the boat out in La Rochelle in the final stage of build the idea being that I can take some pictures of the boat before she is fully assembled.
The manager from mailspeed ‘Billy’ contacted us over our comments from our last visit, he found our comments by doing a search ‘Mailspeed Customer Service’ over the internet, he apologised about his staff’s performance and was genuine about being sorry.
Whilst typing this update, literally, Billy has called again he explained why we experienced such poor service on the day and is sending us a £50 voucher, apologies accepted.
Last weekend I was doing some browsing on Ebay and came across a business ‘Boatropes’ who sell via ebay, the main product is basically ‘Rope’, which I am in the market to buy, so placed an order for 2 mooring warps and an anchor warp. The service and products I received from Barry Edwards was fantastic, Barry has since sent me an email with a list of his products and prices, which are very competitive.
My Iridium account has now been activated and the phone is now live, the first number I have entered was Falmouth MRCC – 01326 317575, hope I never use it!
I have had a quick play with sending a text message to the phone, sending an email to the phone and calling various mobile and land line numbers, all working well so far and I am really impressed with the Iridium phone and service, next is to setup the laptop to send and receive emails.
The manager from mailspeed ‘Billy’ contacted us over our comments from our last visit, he found our comments by doing a search ‘Mailspeed Customer Service’ over the internet, he apologised about his staff’s performance and was genuine about being sorry.
Whilst typing this update, literally, Billy has called again he explained why we experienced such poor service on the day and is sending us a £50 voucher, apologies accepted.
Last weekend I was doing some browsing on Ebay and came across a business ‘Boatropes’ who sell via ebay, the main product is basically ‘Rope’, which I am in the market to buy, so placed an order for 2 mooring warps and an anchor warp. The service and products I received from Barry Edwards was fantastic, Barry has since sent me an email with a list of his products and prices, which are very competitive.
My Iridium account has now been activated and the phone is now live, the first number I have entered was Falmouth MRCC – 01326 317575, hope I never use it!
I have had a quick play with sending a text message to the phone, sending an email to the phone and calling various mobile and land line numbers, all working well so far and I am really impressed with the Iridium phone and service, next is to setup the laptop to send and receive emails.
Saturday, 9 February 2008
Packing
Last weekend was spent almost entirely spending lots of money on internet shopping! Therefore most of this week was spent receiving parcels in the post! I don’t care what anyone says, no one can convince me that isn’t much better than the horrors of shopping at weekends, not that the sort of thing we were buying can be bought on your average high street.
We are now the proud owners of water filters, autopilots (automated steering device), bolt cutters, water purification tablets, additional fire extinguishers, grab bag supplies (in case of going to Liferaft), EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon), 12V hand vacuum cleaner, satellite phone, generator, bosun’s chair (harness to go up the mast) etc etc, etc. After weeks and weeks of research it was simply a matter of placing the orders, we had deliberately left this until relatively late because we didn’t want warranties expiring sitting in the garage.
There have been lots of decisions to be made in the last few weeks, we have had to confirm the optional extras for the boat – as it is now in production!! It’s seven weeks today until we arrive in La Rochelle and our boat is delivered on a very impressive tilting HGV trailer from the factory some miles in land to the beautiful La Rochelle old town and the commissioning quay. We passed a Mahe heading to the water on our trip to the factory, at 5 meters wide it takes some impressive driving to negotiate the parked cars, roundabouts etc on the journey. That is part of the process I will be very happy not to witness!! We had planned to visit the factory again 6/7th March before they fit the “lid” (the mould of the boat is in two parts, the join being just below deck level. The production process means building everything inside the boat before fitting the lid, Kevin was therefore keen to go over to take photos of where pipes, cables etc are run before this stage of production passes. However the build is now running a week early (how often do you hear that?!) and we will now need to be there on 28th Feb to see the boat before this is complete. Unfortunately, I can’t travel on 27th Feb due to work commitments, so unless I can find a suitable flight Kevin may need to make this trip on his own. As I have every weekend in April in La Rochelle when the boat is on the water, I am happy to forgo this one trip.
We have also now received the bill for the boat, which I guess makes things pretty real! So we are now anxiously watching the £/Euro exchange rate hoping for a rallying in the next couple of weeks, as payment is apparently now due 1 month before handover not 1 week as previously agreed. The other thing which gives reality to our plans is that we have started packing! Last weekend was also used for some more eBaying (now superfluous tender & outboard, etc) which has cleared a little more space in the garage and allowed us to start gathering all the items which we will fit initially on the boat.
The other fairly big change of plan is that we have now calculated that we won’t be able to bring the boat back to the UK as we hoped to ease the fitting out procedure and aid wedding preparations as we wish to export the boat from the EU and the time allowed for delivery was not as long as we first thought. Therefore, we are now back to plan A (which always seems to be the way with us!), delivery of the boat from La Rochelle to Canary Islands approximately 20th April (leaving a few weeks for new boat de-snagging and kitting out). Kevin will then stay with the boat through the summer, with myself and Alex flying out when possible, until August when Kevin returns for our wedding and we then both fly back and set sail for a tour of the Canaries together until November when we will set off for our Atlantic crossing.
We are now the proud owners of water filters, autopilots (automated steering device), bolt cutters, water purification tablets, additional fire extinguishers, grab bag supplies (in case of going to Liferaft), EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon), 12V hand vacuum cleaner, satellite phone, generator, bosun’s chair (harness to go up the mast) etc etc, etc. After weeks and weeks of research it was simply a matter of placing the orders, we had deliberately left this until relatively late because we didn’t want warranties expiring sitting in the garage.
There have been lots of decisions to be made in the last few weeks, we have had to confirm the optional extras for the boat – as it is now in production!! It’s seven weeks today until we arrive in La Rochelle and our boat is delivered on a very impressive tilting HGV trailer from the factory some miles in land to the beautiful La Rochelle old town and the commissioning quay. We passed a Mahe heading to the water on our trip to the factory, at 5 meters wide it takes some impressive driving to negotiate the parked cars, roundabouts etc on the journey. That is part of the process I will be very happy not to witness!! We had planned to visit the factory again 6/7th March before they fit the “lid” (the mould of the boat is in two parts, the join being just below deck level. The production process means building everything inside the boat before fitting the lid, Kevin was therefore keen to go over to take photos of where pipes, cables etc are run before this stage of production passes. However the build is now running a week early (how often do you hear that?!) and we will now need to be there on 28th Feb to see the boat before this is complete. Unfortunately, I can’t travel on 27th Feb due to work commitments, so unless I can find a suitable flight Kevin may need to make this trip on his own. As I have every weekend in April in La Rochelle when the boat is on the water, I am happy to forgo this one trip.
We have also now received the bill for the boat, which I guess makes things pretty real! So we are now anxiously watching the £/Euro exchange rate hoping for a rallying in the next couple of weeks, as payment is apparently now due 1 month before handover not 1 week as previously agreed. The other thing which gives reality to our plans is that we have started packing! Last weekend was also used for some more eBaying (now superfluous tender & outboard, etc) which has cleared a little more space in the garage and allowed us to start gathering all the items which we will fit initially on the boat.
The other fairly big change of plan is that we have now calculated that we won’t be able to bring the boat back to the UK as we hoped to ease the fitting out procedure and aid wedding preparations as we wish to export the boat from the EU and the time allowed for delivery was not as long as we first thought. Therefore, we are now back to plan A (which always seems to be the way with us!), delivery of the boat from La Rochelle to Canary Islands approximately 20th April (leaving a few weeks for new boat de-snagging and kitting out). Kevin will then stay with the boat through the summer, with myself and Alex flying out when possible, until August when Kevin returns for our wedding and we then both fly back and set sail for a tour of the Canaries together until November when we will set off for our Atlantic crossing.
Friday, 25 January 2008
Countdown
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.
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.
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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