We will of course be renting our house for the duration of our cruise so if anyone is interested in or knows someone who would like to rent a three bed victorian semi in the Brixton Hill area please contact Townends Streatham after the coming weekend. Posession will be available on 15 April.
Townends
Telephone: 0800 074 0095
Monday, 25 March 2013
Thursday, 21 March 2013
Back in Blighty For Now
Well. We have been 24 hours back in the UK after a very relaxing and nice visit to Jamaica. Now the work starts in earnest for our departure. After all the other climactic changes and departures, this one doesn't feel so special though. Rather it feels like the next stage is commencing. My phone countdown tells me we have 24 days till Sunday 14 April when we fly down to Gibraltar for the last time.
Red letter day event was the purchase of a new laptop for the boat. We would have liked to stick with the trusty Acer netbook that we have had for the last five years but it is really very slow now and is getting to that stage where it can't keep a charge in it's battery. So we are now in posession of a shiny new entry level Lenovo laptop. For the geeks amongst our readers, it is only an entry level one but as a boat is a harsh environment, there was no point in getting a super duper special one. Also, it runs Windows 7 rather than the dreadful 8. I did think of putting Ubuntu on it but having everything running out the box was too much of an attraction now I am not an IT professional. Many will have a chortle about that given my liking for Open source. Needles to say, this is being written on LibreOffice and Firefox is our browser of choice.
Enough geeky stuff though!
Rather, we need to get back to lists. Here is where the lists are at the moment.
From 21/03/2013 – Things to do and plan
House
Tile kitchen
shelves in kitchen
decorate new kitchen
finish storage in loft
contact Townends
opticians
visit doctor for jabs
inform lambeth of council tax change
cancel gas
cancel electricity
cancel phone
cancel broadband
get RK o2 phone to payg
car to service and MOT
clear garden
rubbish to tip
touch up paint in study
touch up paint in bedroom
finish paint in dining room
change address for banks
curtains for dining room
shorten all new curtains
Danny to finish plaster work in new kitchen
decorate new kitchen
buy back door
Danny to fit back door
carpet edging
finish off lino in kitchen
Boat (In UK)
Awning
Charts
work out what phone to use for gymsim
Iridium airtime
make clothes organising bags
buy new clothes
Boat (In Spain)
Standing rigging
Will Honda outboard work?
New outboard if above is no
anchor chain
new batteries
windvane
service engine
Red letter day event was the purchase of a new laptop for the boat. We would have liked to stick with the trusty Acer netbook that we have had for the last five years but it is really very slow now and is getting to that stage where it can't keep a charge in it's battery. So we are now in posession of a shiny new entry level Lenovo laptop. For the geeks amongst our readers, it is only an entry level one but as a boat is a harsh environment, there was no point in getting a super duper special one. Also, it runs Windows 7 rather than the dreadful 8. I did think of putting Ubuntu on it but having everything running out the box was too much of an attraction now I am not an IT professional. Many will have a chortle about that given my liking for Open source. Needles to say, this is being written on LibreOffice and Firefox is our browser of choice.
Enough geeky stuff though!
Rather, we need to get back to lists. Here is where the lists are at the moment.
From 21/03/2013 – Things to do and plan
House
Tile kitchen
shelves in kitchen
decorate new kitchen
finish storage in loft
contact Townends
opticians
visit doctor for jabs
inform lambeth of council tax change
cancel gas
cancel electricity
cancel phone
cancel broadband
get RK o2 phone to payg
car to service and MOT
clear garden
rubbish to tip
touch up paint in study
touch up paint in bedroom
finish paint in dining room
change address for banks
curtains for dining room
shorten all new curtains
Danny to finish plaster work in new kitchen
decorate new kitchen
buy back door
Danny to fit back door
carpet edging
finish off lino in kitchen
Boat (In UK)
Awning
Charts
work out what phone to use for gymsim
Iridium airtime
make clothes organising bags
buy new clothes
Boat (In Spain)
Standing rigging
Will Honda outboard work?
New outboard if above is no
anchor chain
new batteries
windvane
service engine
Sunday, 10 March 2013
Dealing with Mozzies
One of the things we have had to deal with in the past is the propensity of mosquitoes to use us as their restaurant. We have used various repellents in the past and found citronella to be the best though DEET is also useful. The trouble with DEET is that it tends to make you repellent to other humans whereas citronella is quite a nice smell. Copious quantities of this along with a few citronella candles are on the list of things to buy and send down to Spain. The other solution is to anchor offshore where you are less likely to be found by the irritating buzzing beasties but this is not always possible and we don't want to restrict where we visit based on being inaccessible to mosquitoes.
However, we have also been thinking of using mozzie nets over our bunks. Has anyone else had experience of this? Answers by email or in the comments gratefully accepted.
However, we have also been thinking of using mozzie nets over our bunks. Has anyone else had experience of this? Answers by email or in the comments gratefully accepted.
Sunday, 3 March 2013
Another Step On The Road
Well, we are now both unemployed and the whole enterprise has taken another step on the way to reality. I finished work last Thursday and had a very enjoyable leaving do on the Friday. My thanks to all who were able to come an make for a very memorable evening.
At home, the new kitchen is taking shape and all the units should be finished by tomorrow leaving the tiling and the shelving for me to finish when we get back from Jamaica. That is the other side of the issue as we are booked to fly to Kingston on Tuesday. We will be there for two weeks and be back in the UK on 20/03. We then have just over three weeks to get the rest of the stuff packed up before flying down the Gibraltar on 14/04. I will post some suitable pictures soon.
All, the flights are booked and it is all starting to feel very real.
At home, the new kitchen is taking shape and all the units should be finished by tomorrow leaving the tiling and the shelving for me to finish when we get back from Jamaica. That is the other side of the issue as we are booked to fly to Kingston on Tuesday. We will be there for two weeks and be back in the UK on 20/03. We then have just over three weeks to get the rest of the stuff packed up before flying down the Gibraltar on 14/04. I will post some suitable pictures soon.
All, the flights are booked and it is all starting to feel very real.
Sunday, 17 February 2013
The Philosophy of Long Distance Cruising
There is a lot of difference between the weekend and summer holiday cruising and going long term cruising. The latter has all sorts of terms to describe it. Blue water, long distance, live aboard, cruising, ocean cruising and many others. It is of course obviously different from spending a weekend on your boat or even a three week summer holiday. You will travel much further for one thing. However, the biggest distinction for the long term sailor is that the boat becomes your main home for a period of time. This leads to a very different outlook and way of thinking. At it's core is a sense of self sufficiency and the expectation that you will be thrown on your own resources.
A weekend sailor is on holiday when they go down to the boat and it is treated as such – time away from the office, family, garden or what have you. The blue water cruiser on the other hand is at home and the running of the boat and sailing places is the main show. It is of course a very enjoyable show and one that has been chosen and for which an awful lot of energy and planning has been expended to achieve.
The biggest issue with setting out on a long cruise is the number of ties you need or want to cut. At the furthest extreme, there are those who sell their house and plan to live on the boat for the duration perhaps spending multiple years in each ocean as part of a very leisurely circumnavigation. One couple spent twenty five years this way – albeit with a long break in the far east where they topped up their cruising funds. At the most modest end, are the ones who spend just a couple of months or so travelling a bit further than they would otherwise manage in the usual summer holiday. We did this with our cruise to Gibraltar in 2011. Now, we are planning a middle route with a probable Atlantic crossing to the Caribbean (not a fixed plan though!). People in these situations do not generally burn all their bridges at home. We will be renting the house after all.
The self sufficiency comes in as you will always be on a budget of some sort so cannot necessarily afford to get a professional to fix things. Even if you do have nearly unlimited funds, it may well be that you are in a place where the expertise to fix complicated and specialised equipment is not available. Thus, you always equip your boat with a view to being able to fix it yourself in a pinch. Or, you may have to accept that you will have to do without the latest whiz bang toys. For example, we do now have a chart plotter and will probably wind up using it more and more. However, we are going through a big exercise to acquire plenty of charts so we can still find our way around in the absence of the shiny touch screen box on the chart table. After all microelectronics and sea water do not make easy bedfellows. I am, once again, determined to teach myself celestial navigation so as to have even more independence from electronics.
Seeing cruising in this way makes it appear a much more serious affair and there seems no room for fun. However, the fundamental philosophy should still be: “If we aren't enjoying it, we shouldn't be doing it”. That means a willingness to curtail plans and amend them to fit new circumstances. It should still be fun and if it isn't there should be a very good reason for enduring the unenjoyable bit in anticipation of a big reward later on. The marina at Lagos might be a bit pricey and the area around it full of expats looking for a fry up breakfast but the pay off will be a chance to get fitted out and then reach the Cape Verde Islands in time for Christmas in the tropics and rum punch in Trinidad with a trouble free Atlantic crossing owing to a bit of essential maintenance being done in Lagos.
A weekend sailor is on holiday when they go down to the boat and it is treated as such – time away from the office, family, garden or what have you. The blue water cruiser on the other hand is at home and the running of the boat and sailing places is the main show. It is of course a very enjoyable show and one that has been chosen and for which an awful lot of energy and planning has been expended to achieve.
The biggest issue with setting out on a long cruise is the number of ties you need or want to cut. At the furthest extreme, there are those who sell their house and plan to live on the boat for the duration perhaps spending multiple years in each ocean as part of a very leisurely circumnavigation. One couple spent twenty five years this way – albeit with a long break in the far east where they topped up their cruising funds. At the most modest end, are the ones who spend just a couple of months or so travelling a bit further than they would otherwise manage in the usual summer holiday. We did this with our cruise to Gibraltar in 2011. Now, we are planning a middle route with a probable Atlantic crossing to the Caribbean (not a fixed plan though!). People in these situations do not generally burn all their bridges at home. We will be renting the house after all.
The self sufficiency comes in as you will always be on a budget of some sort so cannot necessarily afford to get a professional to fix things. Even if you do have nearly unlimited funds, it may well be that you are in a place where the expertise to fix complicated and specialised equipment is not available. Thus, you always equip your boat with a view to being able to fix it yourself in a pinch. Or, you may have to accept that you will have to do without the latest whiz bang toys. For example, we do now have a chart plotter and will probably wind up using it more and more. However, we are going through a big exercise to acquire plenty of charts so we can still find our way around in the absence of the shiny touch screen box on the chart table. After all microelectronics and sea water do not make easy bedfellows. I am, once again, determined to teach myself celestial navigation so as to have even more independence from electronics.
Seeing cruising in this way makes it appear a much more serious affair and there seems no room for fun. However, the fundamental philosophy should still be: “If we aren't enjoying it, we shouldn't be doing it”. That means a willingness to curtail plans and amend them to fit new circumstances. It should still be fun and if it isn't there should be a very good reason for enduring the unenjoyable bit in anticipation of a big reward later on. The marina at Lagos might be a bit pricey and the area around it full of expats looking for a fry up breakfast but the pay off will be a chance to get fitted out and then reach the Cape Verde Islands in time for Christmas in the tropics and rum punch in Trinidad with a trouble free Atlantic crossing owing to a bit of essential maintenance being done in Lagos.
Saturday, 9 February 2013
Red Letter Day
Flight booked From Gatwick to Gibraltar - 13/04/2013 One Way!!
The departure time is 07:00 though so it will be a very early start.
The adventure will really have started then.
The departure time is 07:00 though so it will be a very early start.
The adventure will really have started then.
Thursday, 31 January 2013
Packing Up
Some of the boxes
And some of the rubbish to throw away. The bed in the spare room seemed the best place to leave it till we can get down to the tip!
And some of the rubbish to throw away. The bed in the spare room seemed the best place to leave it till we can get down to the tip!
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