Katerina - Weather Routing Gods

Hi there everyone. Well sunshine and flatish ( the spell checker wanted to respell flatish as flatfish, um spooky ) seas at last, time to catch up, clean the boat open a few "Not to be opened at sea" hatches, ahh fresh air below. I wont start with adding to our breakage list you would only, like me get depressed. I thought I would explain why we are sailing beautifully in 6.3 knots of true on the beam with a SOG of 5.2 knots. No I'm not talking about our well designed boat or my excellant light windsail trimming, I'm talking weather routing.Thanks to our great friends back in Cowes Tom, Philippa & Stan we are hooked up with an excellant weather router. Simon Rowell of www.rowellyachtingservices.com +44(0)7971974015. It's an amazing asset for this sort of undertaking. The 2 of us can. read more...

Katerina - Wet n wild

A few days since our last blog. There are 3 reasons for this:a. wind-up to 42 knotsb. waves up to 5 meters or so and c. rain, mainly from squalls that rush in, dump half a ton of water on your head and then disappear! Blue water sailing huh - we're still in full oilies at night. So whilst these conditions have prevailed balancing a laptop whilst gripping the sat phone between your teeth trying to get a signal has been, to say the least, a little tricky. However, bit better now so here we go with a quick update of the highlights: Friday 30th Nov - our 25th wedding anniversary. A huge pod of dolphins arrived and gave us a spectacular acrobatic display. These were the first dolphins of the trip and we haven't seen them since. Now as the same thing happened on my 60th birthday in July I. read more...

Katerina - The next fews days at Sea

This seems amazing fun I think. We seem to be human pinballs most of the time, with scores rated on the amount of bruises we each have. First I would like to amend our breakage list. 1 reef pennant, 1 spinaker sheet, 1 spinnaker track car, 2 mainsail battens, 2 coffe cups, several toe nails. Most of the time we have winds of 25-30 knots and the atmosphere is more like a volvo ocean racer than blue water cruising. On the second night or was it the third, I was powering along on the helm and then decided to give the auto pilot a go. Big mistake, he coped well for half an hour then in a big gust and huge set of waves he broached. This is the closest we have come to a knock down but this was not the problem. As Jeeves (our autopilot) over corrected we spun around and over onto the other. read more...

Katerina - First few days at sea

Well that was an exciting first day, rain squalls, large following sea. This carried on through the first night and the next day with winds gusting to 34knts and 4 mtr + waves in places. We did however get our all time speed record of 15.8 SOG down one wave and another 5 trips down waves at 15 +. Moving around the boat has been pretty difficult with the sea state but that was expected. List of breakages so far top main sheet car, top main sheet batten and the nav station seat. So trying not to push too hard as I can see these breakages continuing. Just about staying awake on watch but I hope we shall get used to that soon.Having a ball Scott & JuliaPS The butter hasn't melted yet, thick coats needed at night. read more...

Katerina - Showing the Flag

Shelley 'Ailsa' is organised as usual and brought her own Union Flag for the opening ceremony.  Scott and I impressed ourselves by actually being up and about in time to attend! The pontoons are getting more and more hectic with crews running back and forth to the chandler like good natured headless chickens.PS Hope you're impressed with the number of blogs we've done -new wi-fi aerial works!Scott and JuliaWCC2.. read more...