A quick recap of the year

The last few months have been characterised by unforgivable radio silence. For those of you who very kindly invest time in visiting this blog, I am sorry that the updates have not happened since April. The last post mentioned that Valent had moved round to Hamble Yacht Services (HYS), (now called Ancasta Yacht Services), and gone into the shed. 2 weeks after that, Suzy handed in her notice at work and we were in full departure mode. We had already handed in notice to the school to remove the girls. In early May it became increasingly obvious that our trip was in serious jeopardy due to Covid. The messages coming out of Australia were making it very clear that any hope of visiting in Jul 2022 was extremely optimistic. We had a few chats with the World ARC team, and it became clear that they were thinking of cancelling the 2022 edition of the World ARC. A few phone calls later, Suzy had her job back, the girls were re-enrolled at school and we had postponed our adventure for another 12 months. By the end of Jun 21 the World ARC did indeed cancel the 2022 edition, justifying our early call on postponing. I confess to feeling disappointed and rather withdrew from updating these pages. The other reason was getting some photos from Suzy’s phone – but that has been done, and 2022 is only just round the corner, or put another way, we hope to be departing in 7 months.

Valent was over at HYS to have the deck fittings removed and resealed, the hatch seals redone and to generally stop the leaks coming in through the deck. The other jobs included a new calorifier, (the old one failed on the way back from Spain), fitting the Hydrovane and Hydrogenerator and a few other jobs like a new sprayhood. Additionally, since the mast had to come out we took the opportunity to replace the standing rigging. This work went a little more slowly than expected, but eventually we were ready for relaunch in early July, just in time for the Summer holidays.

Photos: Top – relaunch, Bottom fm. left, the old calorifier, fitted Hydrovane bracket, dropping the mast back in.

Just before we departed on our Summer holiday the relay unit on the anchor failed. Mike of Ocean Electronics was able to work his magic and on it, and after a quick check of systems we were ready to depart in August. The plan was to cruise along the South Coast as far as The Scilly Isles and Falmouth. In the event the weather was not helpful. We delayed our departure by a day due to the horrible weather that greeted the start of the Fastnet. After that we made our way as far as Salcombe, with stops in Lymington, Portland & Dartmouth. Prior to our trip the girls had fun for a week on a dinghy sailing course, and Lucy learnt about the importance of ducking under the boom.

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Our next planned trip was the Oct half term. As the date got closer, my attention to the weather forecast became more focussed, and it soon became clear that a week sailing in the Solent/UK was going to be chilly, damp and at times very miserable. A quick bit of searching on the internet, and we were off to Greece for a week sailing with Sailing Holidays. We ended up on a very nice Beneteau 50 and joined the cruised in the North Ionian, mainly Corfu and the Greek Mainland. Some very pleasant days, a bit of swimming and plenty of chance to enjoy moving from A to B without putting on the foulies and hugging a hot drink.