Month: September 2022

If you are wondering why we appear to be going nowhere, why we still seem to be in Southampton and why we have been rather quiet then read on.

Last week we received the dreadful news that Valent’s deck is disintegrating, or in technical terms has delaminated. It would appear that water has been building up in the wooden core and gradually the layers of ply have separated. The new deck is no longer bonded to the core below, and the core is loose bits of wood (at best) or a soggy mess at worst. Some of the serious load bearing deck fittings are no longer correctly secured, and if subjected to stress would be liable to pull out of the deck and cause much worse issues at sea.

Whilst culpability will be a question for another day, Valent is now stuck in a boatyard awaiting a slot to be returned into a shed for urgent repairs. The repairs will take 2-3 months. We estimate that we will now not be ready to sail until Easter 2023 and will therefore miss the ARC Atlantic crossing this year and the start of the World ARC in January 2023. During the repairs we cannot live on the boat (and even if we could, we wouldn’t want to live on the boat in the UK in winter). That leaves us marooned in the UK with no boat and our house let out. We will work out a solution, but current thinking is to find somewhere to live around the South Coast for 6 months. This will allow us to be close to Valent and to help progress the works as quickly as possible.

Once back on the water, we hope to be able to salvage something from our planned trip; but, given our requirement to be back by Aug/Sep 2024 we can no longer sail round the world. We can only get halfway round. Maybe we go to Australia and figure it out from there. Maybe we just do the Caribbean. Maybe we create our own route. Whatever it is, we are trying to stay positive, and focussed on getting Valent fixed and ready to go.

by Lucy Collins

On Saturday the 27th of August we set off to get a buoy in-between Tresco and Bryher. We set off early so we could get a buoy because there were only two that would fit us. We were a little unsure if we had made the right decision to set off early instead of exploring St. Mary’s more as we had only had one day on the island, but it all paid off when we got to Tresco as the buoys were all empty apart from 2 and we got to take our pick. By the end of the day all of them were full and other boats were anchoring.

The next day we went to the Tresco Abbey Gardens where there were activity sheets of items to look out for that you could cross off. We found everything. Our two favourite things that we saw were the Golden Pheasant, this was very bright and would be impossible to mistake for anything else. Secondly it was also a joy to see all the red squirrels, as the island is covered with them due to not having any grey squirrels there. There were so many that by the time we got back on to the mainland we had forgotten what a grey squirrel looked like. After that we went to do some geocaches (a geocache is basically a smallish box that you have to find and sign your name in the log, then you replace it). One of the geocaches led us to a secret treehouse which I will explain about in greater detail later.

Having done all our schoolwork for the day, and since we had had so much fun the day before, we decided to go back to the secret treehouse. This time we got tracked down by a tractor, but it eventually lost us as we clambered through some wood on the terrain that it could not go on. Once we had got there, we set to work (play). We took lots of weird and wonderful photos which we will show you a few of.

Having spent a lot of time on Tresco we decided to spend our last day over on Bryher. When we got to Bryher there was a big boat beaching itself on the sand. We found some geocaches and had a look in the art gallery and shop. We also went into the hotel and finally went and got ice cream from one of the cafes.

We slipped our lines from the buoy and started our journey back to Shamrock Quay (the marina we were staying in). The weather was bad, and it was the most unpleasant journey that I have had yet. Near to the Helford River our main fuel tank run out but luckily for us we had 200 litres in the spare tank. We were trying to transfer the fuel while sailing with little wind. Eventually we managed it and anchored the night in the Helford.

Having had a rest at anchor we went and got fuel in Falmouth. Then saying goodbye to the land, we started our over-night journey back into the Solent and to Southampton. Early on we saw the odd dolphin. As the weather was so calm, we got out the beanbags and later on watched a movie before we then had dinner. After that we cleared away for the night. While the grown-ups were on watch there was a most spectacular shoal of dolphins. Unfortunately, we did not get to see them as it was midnight. We ate breakfast while going past the Isle of Wight and slowly making our way back into Southampton Water. We had the suspense of getting under the bridge, but luckily, we managed it. We got Valent all tied up and back into Southampton.