“ TO INFINITY AND BEYOND! “ by Miles Peckham
This, dear reader, is the official blog for sailing yacht ‘Infinity of Yar’ and her crossing of the Atlantic Ocean with the ARC 2017.
This, our first missive, will explore the yacht, her origins and the make up of her crew.
The challenge for your author is to entice you into wanting to read beyond this first episode.
“ Well good luck with that," I hear you say and thus my challenge has already begun!
And, so to the title of our blog “ To Infinity and Beyond! “ Yes, well done sir, it is Buzz Lightyear’s immortal words from the film ‘Toy Story’.
Given the name of the boat and the challenge ahead, it didn’t take a genius … “ Just as well, “ I hear coming back at me with a collective sigh - stick with me it might get better.
Infinity of Yar is a Hanse 455 hatched in 2016 by those clever people in Germany and fitted out at Hamble Point for Keith and Sarah Davey. And the ‘of Yar’ bit? Her home base is Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, as it is for every member of our six man crew but more of them later.
So to Keith’s (our Skipper’s) brilliant plan; take a brand new boat, shake down in the solent for a few weeks then sail nearly 4,000 miles via Falmouth, the Bay of Biscay, Corunna, Lisbon, the Canary Islands and St. Lucia to the Caribbean to find out just how second hand you can make a boat in 18 months - further instalments of breakages and mishaps to follow.
As you join us we have made it to Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. Our landfall in the Canaries was Lanzarote of which more in a minute.
The owners, Keith and Sarah, left Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight one Monday morning in June this year to great fanfare and flag waving. Your author attended on crutches having lacerated his foot standing on a wine glass in bare feet during the weekend farewell party. It is true to say that some libation had been taken, with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm.
The first leg of their adventure took them to Falmouth to await the ‘crack crew’ that was to assist with the crossing of The Bay.
This crew consisted of your author - still with a pronounced limp adding to his piratical appearance - and Anthony Davies, a well known local sailor, Bon Viveur and all round good egg, also from that hub of world yachting, Yarmouth.
Immediately storm bound, as befits any crossing of the Bay of Biscay, we found ourselves roaming the pontoons for entertainment when we happened upon ‘ Mr Halberg- Rassy '
Fresh in from Iceland and heading south via Portugal and Africa to God knows where (and further) we were ‘entertained’ for an hour or more by his knowledge of matters navigational. Like a maritime peacock he fluffed up his feathers and clucked around demonstrating his prowess in the dark art of weather mapping; measuring the length of his manhood by the sheer number of undiscovered apps available at his fingertips!
When asked what our planned route to Corruna would be your author glibly replied, “Wait for the wind to drop, head out, turn right for a bit then head South”.
"You don’t want to do it like that,” says the Harry Enfield of world yachting and several apps plus 45 minutes of weather mapping later I dozed off so I am unable to to impart those particular nuggets of meteorological wizardry to my avid readers, all desperate to hoover up their author’s new found wisdom.
The next day dawned clear of the storm and my personal logs reads:-
Waited for the wind to drop, headed out and turned right for a bit then headed south for Corunna. I will admit that the ship’s log might have had a fraction more detail but I wouldn’t admit that to Mr H-R.
We encountered two and a half days of very un-Bay like light airs, then geneker up for 9 knots straight down the rhumb line towards Corunna - fabulous. In the middle of the Bay it was interesting to note, as another wonderful pod of dolphins played around the bow, that we were 150 miles from Ushant, 150 miles from Corunna, 300 miles offshore from France and 5 miles from the bottom of the ocean below us!
The last 24 hours was proper Bay of Biscay stuff however. The further South we got the stronger the wind until we were reaching in 30knots + with the Atlantic swell on the starboard quarter competing with the wind and following seas on the port quarter. It was something of a sleigh ride and we discovered we could do with a third reef!!
Safely tied up in Corunna our Skipper described the conditions as, “Fresh to frightening.”
“ Is that frightening with two F’s? " asked your author.
“Lovely sailing breeze,” said the world girdling Mr Halberg-Rassy - a discreet but rapid movement of the wrist indicates that my friend and fellow crewman is sharing my thoughts.
Keith and Sarah then cruised the Portuguese coast for the next few weeks making their way to Lisbon where your author joined them again, this time with Dug Henderson and Gordon Drury - two salty dogs from the West Solent. Dug is part of the the ARC team and is from Yarmouth (as we all are) and Gordon is from Lymington (ALPAW) - see the author personally in the bar of the Royal Solent Yacht Club for a translation of this acronym, it will only cost you a beer and a signature on the official secrets act!
Setting off from Lisbon we covered the 650 odd miles to Lanzarote without incident in 4.5 days. Once we had passed the Straits of Gibraltar to port the shipping tailed off and there was little to report other than the usual flurry of dolphins, two wonderful whale sightings and one strange night with two ninety degree wind shifts that kept us guessing.
Our landfall in Lanzarote was made at about 1 am and we crept into Arrecife with it’s confusing leading lights and dog leg turns. Such was the short distance between the lights, the tightness of the channel and the sharpness of the turns, it was very hard to identify which way to go when faced with red and green lights dotted all over the harbour and no one particular light obviously nearer than the next.
The marina is shared with a commercial port, brand new but somewhat without soul.
Now, readers, having never been to Lanzarote before when I awoke the next morning I thought the Skipper (our very own Buzz Lightyear) had in fact taken us to the moon. Beyond the marina was this desolate dusty-black volcanic landscape with occasional white painted houses. Your author was not impressed. It was like looking at a black and white photograph or, perhaps, a painting by Banksy with a monotone canvass and a single red flower in one corner.
One garden presented 14 different types of cacti in a beautifully manicured garden of black volcanic ash - “Good effort madam, but hardly going to win a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower show is it?” The weather was lovely but I prefer the green of our own Island off the south coast of England from whence our story began.
To the handful of you still with me I say “thank you” and next time, if you are brave enough to join me again, we will explore together the make up of the crew as this adventure unfolds. I will give you some background to their characters and an insight into how this disparate band of misfits from the Isle of Wight will knit together into a finely honed machine working like clockwork, each cog fitting perfectly into its prescribed place to produce……… or maybe otherwise! Join me again to find out which way it goes and in the meantime dear readers remember;
"TO INFINITY AND BEYOND!"
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