A new adventure awaits

 This year the Old Gaffers’ Association celebrates its 60th Anniversary with a ‘Round Britain’ cruise.  Last May Roger and I bought a gaff rigged boat so we could take part in this adventure.  She is a Cornish Crabber 26 called Indian Runner and is rather beautiful. Most gaff rigged boats are indeed old, but my bottom line for our boat was that she should not leak, have an engine that is reliable and ‘heads’ that work.  This led us to Indian Runner who was built in 2011.  

You can see the details of the Round Britain Cruise on the Old Gaffer website https://oga.org.uk/oga60/rbc60.html Strictly, we can’t say we are sailing around Britain as we are cutting out the far north of Scotland and going through the Caledonian Canal from Fort William to Inverness on the East Coast. 

To our delight, our good friends Rachel Edwards and Alan Bennett will be joining us for most of this - this is fabulous as they bring both great expertise and good company We are also delighted to be joined for sections by our daughter Isabel, Mike Sullivan and our granddaughter, Georgina. Issie, Mike and Georgina are also accomplished sailors so I guess you can see who is the ‘weakest link’.  

Next week we go down to the boat to get it ready for a ‘shake down’ sail from our berth in Port Hamble marina. The big event starts for us on May 5th as we sail to Cowes, our first Party Port. The Cruise itself starts in Ramsgate but we are not sailing back for that - we’ll catch Ramsgate on our way home. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Home at Last!

Image
We finished last week wondering how we would get our lovely boat fixed. The local man (rightly I think) felt we would be better served by getting a Yanmar dealer, but the one we contacted in Chichester was clearly not interested in taking on the job. There was another firm in Chichester, Cutler Marine, whose voicemail said they were closed for annual leave so on Monday this week, Roger was on the case at 9 a.m.  Success! Luke from Cutler Marine said he would be at the boat at 8 a.m. on Wednesday morning to investigate the problem.  Roger travelled down to Littlehampton by train on Tuesday to be there when Luke arrived.  What wonderful service - Luke arrived early bringing with him some spare parts he thought might be needed.  Not only is Cutler Marine a Yanmar dealer, but they look after 30 Crabbers in Chichester. By mid-morning Luke had fitted a new wiring harness, starter motor and ignition plate and we were back in business!  I was about to go out with the local Ramblers group (expe
Read more

A safe harbour

Image
 Our exit from the Caledonian Canal felt like ‘speedy boarding’.   They really pulled the stops out and from our first bridge at 8.20, everything else was seamless, locks, bridges, and finally the sea lock, all open for us.  We were safely tied up in Inverness Marina by mid morning. We liked the marina and Inverness very much. The city is attractively built on both banks of the River Ness and we enjoyed a run in the morning and an Indian meal later that night.  We had been intending to aim for Lossiemouth the next day, then Whitehills, then Peterhead but we looked at the weather forecasts and decided we didn’t have the luxury of taking three days as the weather was definitely looking stormy on the Saturday. This has turned out to one of our better decisions.  On Thursday we sailed straight to Whitehills. It was a long day but a good one. We made excellent progress all day and covered the 60 miles in 12 hours, arriving at Whitehills at 21.00.  The entrance to the harbour was magical.  F
Read more

Not quite the finishing straight

Image
 Well sailing keeps springing surprises. Up until around six o’clock last night we expected to complete our circumnavigation either today (Friday) or tomorrow.  Only 37 more miles to go. It was not to be.  Everything was going really well. We have loved having Georgina on the boat and we had a great day’s sailing from Dover to Eastbourne which ended with a delightful meal with Martin (and Jack the dog) and Barbara in an Italian restaurant.   Eastbourne Marina is some distance from the town itself and entry and exit is via a lock.  We were moored by the lifeboats and saw the crew come home happy from whatever rescue they had been engaged in.  The next day (yesterday) we headed for Littlehampton. Littlehampton has a bar to cross so entry and exit has to be a couple of hours either side of high tide. The earliest we would safely be able to get in was 5 p.m. so we didn’t have to have a very early start.  We refuelled at Eastbourne and came out of the lock around 10 a.m. Before long we were
Read more