Preparing for our next Adventure

After several people have asked me to reinstate our blog I thought it was time to put pen to paper. I can’t believe it is five and a half years ago that we started our adventure and left the UK to live on board our sail boat and sail down the west coast of France Spain and Portugal the Med.

On completion of our first sailing season we decided that this was the lifestyle we would like to live for the foreseeable future, in order to make living a board a little more comfortable and so that we could accommodate friends and family to stay with us we decided we needed to get a bigger boat. So in January 2015 we bought Kailani a 50 foot Beneteau Oceanis and said a sad farewell to our first boat Miss Lilly.

During our time in the Med we have cruised around Spain, the Balearics, Sardinia, Corsica, Italy, Malta, Greece and Turkey. We have made many friends from all over the world, it didn’t matter what nationality we met we all had something in common, sailing and living the dream, oh and the occasional drink.

Last winter we decided to cross the Atlantic to the Caribbean and so whilst back in the UK we made sure we got all the necessary vaccinations.

Throughout this year we have been making preparations for our second adventure to ensure the boat, and we, are well equipped to deal with the long passage over to the Caribbean. Kevin has spent hours researching what type of communication system we should invest in, we finally decided on the Iridium GO which enables us to send and receive messages via the Web, access the weather forecast and enable our friends and family to track our progress.

We also decided to invest in a new chart plotter, radar, auto pilot, and a fishing rod and so our bank balances are looking a little unhealthy but we felt it was worth the investment to try and ensure we covered all eventualities.

My own research has been focused on how we should dispose of rubbish whilst on passage, what can be thrown overboard which isn’t much, and what we have to keep on board until getting to our first destination Barbados. I have also been making menu plans, calculating the quantity of food we will need to get, what meals can be prepared in advance, what keeps well and what doesn’t, especially fruit and veg. We also hope to catch some fish on our passage and so I have been looking at different ways to cook it whilst under way.

Another task was to ensure we had a well-stocked first aid kit, which included a suture pack, which I hope I will never have to use, antibiotics, sea sickness pills, and analgesics to name but a few, I have to say it was easier than I thought as most of the items could be purchased over the counter from the pharmacists in Italy, Spain or Greece.

This year our season started with a trip over to Malta to get a Rigging check, we were very impressed with the surveyor, who did the check whilst we were at anchor and was very thorough. We had also been experiencing problems with our engine and so managed to get it repaired whilst we were there, or so we thought.

It was then off to Argostoli in Greece to spend some time sailing around the Ionian, one of my favourite cruising grounds, during the passage Kevin manage to catch something which must have been big as it bent the rod in half, however it was the one that got away. We also had to motor most of the way as the predicted winds did not arrive, we also had problems with the engine again. Whilst in Lefkas we took the opportunity to hire a car for three days and headed off to visit Metora, a spectacular place where monasteries have been built on the top of pinnacles, and was well worth the trip.

Whilst in the Ionian we met up with several friends from Marina di Ragusa (MdR) our winter refuge. Whilst there we also recruited our crew for the trans-Atlantic passage Ian and Trina whom we had met in MdR the previous winter.  We also finally sorted the problem with the engine. From the south of the Ionian we headed north to meet up with Kevin’s family in Corfu as his daughter was to have a beach wedding in Sadari. We had never attended a beach wedding before and was not sure what to expect, the wedding took place in the evening followed by a BBQ and Greek dancing, watching the faces on the children was sheer pleasure as they thoroughly enjoyed themselves and never stopped dancing all night.

After the wedding Kevin’s son David and his partner Lauren joined us on board for a week which seemed to pass very quickly, no sooner had they arrived than were saying goodbye at Corfu airport.

The following day we started our journey west and headed back towards Italy, we had planned to go to Sardinia via the Messina Straits, but as the reel on the fishing rod had broken when we caught the one that got away we decided to go via MdR to get it repaired or replaced as it was still under warranty. From there we headed to the south of Sardinia, once again motoring most of the way.

From Sardinia it was over to the Balearics, where we planned to pick up Kevin’s niece and nephew, Sophie and Harry who were going to sail with us back to mainland Spain. Whilst with us they had a go at swinging into the water with the halyard, Sophie mastered it well.

After spending a week with us and a rather fast but exciting sail from Ibiza to Alicante they had to say goodbye and we headed off to Gibraltar. Unfortunately we could not get a berth in the Ocean Village Marina as we had not pre-booked and so had to go to La Linea across the border to Spain. Although it was a little bit inconvenient for getting provisions I much preferred the marina there to Ocean Village.

In La Linea we waited and checked the weather forecast daily to get the best weather window to get us down to the Canaries. We decided not to go to Morocco, one reason was our insurance company would not cover us there, and secondly we had never done more than a two night passage and so we felt a non-stop trip would give us a chance to experience a longer passage.

It turned out we had the best sailing we had had all season we only had to motor a short distance, at times the swell would hit the back quarter making the boat roll and so with a four meter swell it was a little uncomfortable, I did wonder if I would manage three weeks crossing the Atlantic, I have been reassured however that it’s not that bad. We also played a game of hide and seek, with the four meter swell we would rise on the crest of the wave where you could see for miles, including any other ships, then we would dip down into the trough and all you could see around you was water.

On arrival in the Canaries we anchored in a bay on Grathiosa, the anchorage was better protected than we first thought it would be, and the holding was good especially as we experienced some strong winds whilst there. During our stay there we went ashore and took a forty minute walk to the nearby village which is built purely on sand, there are no roads there, just sand tracks and the village looked more like something out of a western, we wouldn’t have been surprised to see bush weed rolling down the street. We both liked it there and it was a great first stop after a long passage.

From there we headed south to Rubicon Marina on Lanzarote where we stayed for two weeks whilst our friends Andrew, Karen, Russell and Sharon holidayed in a villa nearby. During their stay we had BBQ’s at the villa and on board Kailani as well as eating out, we must all have put on a few pounds over the two weeks. At the BBQ’s on Kailani at anchor in Papagayo Bay we met and invited Jeff and Sandra our Australian friends who were also at anchor in the bay to join us, it was great to catch up with them and hear of their experience of crossing the Atlantic earlier in the year when they crewed for their friends.

We are now preparing to have the boat lifted out for anti-fouling and some maintenance work in Lanzarote Marina as part of our final preparations for the crossing, they have a huge 820 Ton travel lift the 2^nd largest in Europe.

We will also be heading back to the UK for a few days to see friends and family for the last time for a while as we are not sure when we will get to see them again over the next couple of years.

Distance travelled May 2017 to 6th November 2017: 3,541nm = 4,075m
Since leaving UK in May 2012: 15,076nm = 17,349m
(nm = nuatical miles)