Isles of Scilly - Milford Haven, Wales

Well so much for my blog posts on the run.  Zetty looked at it and reminded me that I completely forgot about our stop in Plymouth among other things. I will edit that post in case you want to read about Plymouth.

From Mylor in Falmouth, we had a nice sail and motor to the Isles of Scilly.  We had to go there as my father always wore a tie to sailing events, a chart of the Isles of Scilly.  It was a great conversation piece as it was the site of the largest navel disaster in British history.  Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell ran his fleet aground after numerous offers by the lower ranking officers to change course.

We arrived in the early morning to Hugh Town on St. Mary's Island, the capital of Scilly's.  As the kids and Zetty spent the day on the beach, I replenished our children's supply of sea sickness medication at the local and only pharmacy on the Isles.  After a nice lunch at the Mermaid Pub, (the kids chose that one, it was a good choice), we set sail for New Grimsby Sound between the Islands of Tresco and Bryher.  It was the site of the British Naval Flying Boat squadron during WWI.  The Sound has quite a history, and is well sheltered and the best all around anchorage in Isles.  There are two castles within hiking distance, one from Oliver Cromwell's time, one named King Charles II's castle but actually from Edward the VI's time. We had so much fun hiking and exploring that we stayed for 2 more days.

Arctic Monkey

To my O.F.D. friends, ambulance boat, the only way I'll be a Captain. 

Hi ho, hi ho...

New Grimsby Sound from King Charles II's castle.

The winds went in our favor and we then set sail for Dale/Milford Haven in a nice 20-25kt breeze from the East.  Within 8 hours, the wind and sea went completely flat and we ended up motoring for the next 7 hours.  The breeze filled in again and we arrived in Dale just as the fog lifted and found ourselves next to a Q-Flex class LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) transport ship.  It turns out that Milford Haven is the largest port in Wales, third largest port in the UK and the largest LNG port in Europe.  Almost one third of the natural gas used in the UK is offloaded here.

After locking through to the marina, we quickly set about contacting the Webasto agent here to have our heater worked on.  We still have a small electrical problem with it and would like to get it sorted out before we get into colder weather up North.  After exploring and a trip to the local museum, we took the kids out for bowling and pizza.  Bowling isn't just a Wisconsin sport!

Showing off the form

Even the six pounder proved a little too heavy.
Rosie was bound and determined to get a face full of bowling ball, look out!

Leah and Rose had never bowled before and I don't think I've ever seen so much excitement!  Knocking over pins and not getting yelled at, heaven!!  The next outing on Sunday was to the much sought after elusive swimming pool.  The local Leisure Center to the rescue with a family swim from noon to 3.  Nice pool and we all swam until the lips turned blue.  I think it also served us well as a family disinfecting bleach bath soak.  The entire family is as clean as we've been for two months, a blessing in disguise!  Now if we can get everything working Monday morning...

Falmouth

It's been a hectic few weeks, putting the final parts together for our Arctic adventure.  We left Lymington on the 8th of April after spending a great Easter holiday with family.  Joining us for the sail to Poole was crew Izzy, Josie and Sam Eeles.  We had a great beam reach down to Old Harry and Old Harry's Wife (notable rocks) as the kids swung from the mast in the climbing harness.  The next day was an excursion to Sand Banks beach.  As we drove over in beautiful sun, something didn't quite look right towards the beach.  Sure enough, as we were 100 yards from the beach, the fog came rolling in.  Old timers sitting out said, "It'll burn off in 10 minutes."  Ha as the whole day was spent looking for the sun, the kids hardly noticed as castles leaped toward the sky. Our stop was cut short as we needed to be in Exemouth by the evening of the 10th to pickup our dinghy.  Exemouth is a "tidal" harbour, entrance through the channel is only available near high tides.  I'm glad we did this during the day!  We made our way in and then through a lifting bridge to a very small marina.  We took delivery of the dinghy spent the night and then left at high tide the next day.  We had a crowd of nearly 50 people watching us leave on both sides of the lifting bridge.  As it's a very narrow and tight space, I think most of the onlookers were waiting for the "NASCAR" moment, a spectacular crash.  I tried to put on a good show but managed to get out unscathed.

A quick 20 mile sail to lovely Dartmouth where we spent 2 nights out in the river on the visitors pontoon.  This gave us a chance to try out the dinghy setup, queue the circus music...How hard could it be?  Place outboard on dinghy, hook up propane, (see Lehr outboards), and pull cord.  I declined the starting instruction while picking up the engine as I've been starting them for 40+ years..Turn up the music...Sixty pulls on the starter cord later, the kids now yelling "When are we leaving Daddy?" I decided maybe I should give the instruction manual a once over.  Oh, you have to prime/purge the gas system.  10 pulls later we had ignition Houston.  Now turn up the music to maximum volume, get everyone one in, put the engine in gear and within 10 feet the dinghy plug, which is trailing on a 2ft cord, is thoroughly wrapped tightly around the prop. My first thought is a quick check to make sure nobody has seen this act.  Out comes the knife and we're back in action after a quick unwind.

From Dartmouth we sailed to Falmouth, 36 miles, in a complete flat calm.  The trip was highlighted by the appearance of some giant jellyfish.  These orange/pink barrel jellyfish have taken over the Cornwall coast as this article due to warm weather.  We decided to stay in Mylor, a small yacht harbour just North of Falmouth.  The boatyard here agreed to look at the Webasto heater.  We have a small 12 volt leak on the negative side when we turn on the heating circuit.  We've isolated it to the Webasto unit itself, and unfortunately haven't been able to get any help from Webasto on the issue.  I'm not impressed by the Webasto customer service, phone calls to voicemail unanswered, email unanswered...We did manage to get the engine serviced for it's first 50-100 hour checkup.  This has to be done by "Authorized personnel" to validate the warranty.  Job done.  We had a great meals at both Castaways Wine Bar and the Mylor Cafe.  Excellent food at both places, well recommend if anyone is close.  Tonight we set sail for the Isles of Scilly, 60 miles South then East.

I'm sorry about the lack of pictures here but Windows 7 has done me in.  Somehow I've lost all permissions to my 2nd hard drive.  After hours of searching and trying permission settings etc. I'm going to take a break and see if something hits me.  Nothing so far has worked...Oh ya, Zetty didn't get a chance to proof read this so blame me for grammar, spelling etc..

LJ

Logistics, gear and more gear

Zetty is ready for the Arctic!

The Arctic Monkey crew took the boat down to Cherbourg again two weeks ago to have some of the final items fixed, repaired or installed.  The guys at Garcia arrived at the boat promptly at 8:30AM and had everything finished by noon.  We headed off to the cité de la mer while the Garcia sales people took a prospective buyer out for a test sail on Arctic Monkey.  I hope it all went well as the boat has been kid bombed for a couple of weeks!  The trip back was plagued with very light wind and we motor-sailed most of the way back to Lymington.  It was nice anyway to get a handle on fuel consumption.  The current, almost reaching 5kts in the middle of the channel, was caused by one of the largest tidal ranges ever recorded in France.  Some places along the north coast expected a 15 meter range, almost 50ft!!  This was is turn caused by the solar eclipse on March 21st.

During the final days into Easter, we're packing the last of all the gear need for our trip to the Arctic.  I remember the days of taxi after taxi trying to source items, getting it back to the boat, off again.  Jeff Bezos has changed everything with Amazon.  I hopped online with the marina WiFi and had pretty much everything ordered in a couple of hours.  A lot of time saved and I think at a reasonable price.

Harken UK has very kind to us, helping to setup Arctic Monkey with a mainsheet traveler.  Although we could probably get away without one, it just doesn't feel right.  I think the sail shape will be much better and maybe squeeze 3-5 more degrees into our pointing angle.

All said, I think I had close to 800 items on my "list" to sort out, procure, store, read manual for, practice on, etc.  I'm down to the last few.  Zetty has been doing a great job with the kids schooling and we've done a few field trips for fun.  The younger kids are sleeping over at Aunt Nicky's tonight, and we have the older ones on board.  It should be interesting as the wind is gusting to 38kts and the boat is lurching a fair amount even as we're tied up in the marina.

Miles so far: 210 NM.

Zoe and Leah pilot the Le Redoutable, a French nuclear ballistic missile submarine from the 1960's on display in Cherbourg.

Radar image crossing the English Channel tracking multiple bogies.

The girls and I on Utah Beach reading about the "Rochambelles", a group of women ambulance drivers in WWII.  I feel like a wimp!

The girls in a bunker on Utah Beach, France.

Cherbourg to Lymington - Leg 1

A lot has happened since we last posted.  We arrived in London with all of our ten bags, each 50 lbs, all intact and most thoroughly searched by the TSA.  I understand that a few things in the bags may have looked a little funny in the X-Ray machine, EPIRB, sewing machine, hot knife, etc.  We piled all the luggage into a rental (hire) car and the wife and kids into Aunt Nicky's van.  The whole gang then went on to Granny Felicity's house for dinner.  All the cousin's were there, Nia, Lauren, Cai, Tabby, Ben, Charley and Jack which made up for us missing Christmas over here this year.  Everyone had a wonderful time, the kids slept until 9AM the next morning.  A couple of days later we took a taxi down to Poole and boarded the Brittany Ferry "Barfleur", for a 4 1/2 hour trip across the English Channel to Cherbourg.  Once settled into the hotel, we took a taxi down to the marina to checkout our boat, Arctic Monkey.  As it was Sunday, the boat was locked but we still had a good look into the windows and a walk around the deck to fuel the excitement for Monday's full first day aboard.  I spent the next 4 days on the boat going over systems and their maintenance with Zetty and the kids watching and learning too.  On Friday, March 6th, we officially became owners of hull #6 of the Garcia Exploration 45 series of yachts.

We moved aboard that night and spent the next 5 days personalizing the boat with coat hooks, bedding, galley items, tools and food.  France has a wonderful selection of "tinned" items such as Confit de Canard, (Duck Stew)... which we added to our stores for rough passages and easy to prepare meals.

We decided to change from our feathering propeller (JProp) to the fixed blade as we might not have another good chance before we get into the ice.  The Normandy Port Authority had just taken delivery of a new 300 ton marine travel lift and we became the first customer.  We had a little trouble getting the JProp off so we had to spend that night on the boat still in the sling.

On Thursday the 12th, the owner of hull #6 was in Cherbourg to test sail our boat.  He wanted just a little reassurance that he'd made the right move in buying a Garcia.  I think he was impressed as he took our boat out for a quick sail and came back smiling.  I looked at the weather forecast and asked Zetty if it was alright with her if we left right away that night as Friday was looking like 25-30kts into the wind.  If we left right away, we'd have light Southwest to Westerlies until at least 8AM.  Garcia was making some last minute fixes on the boat and as they finished at 7PM, we got under way.  Crossing the English Channel at night is quite a nerve wracking sail.  Basically, you cross perpendicular to the shipping traffic and try to avoid altering course or speed so that the shipping can maneuver around you as we sail. (Sailboat have the right-of-way over motorized vessels.)  At one point we had 12 ships in an 8 mile radius, some doing 22kts, passing as close as 1/2 miles from us.  It reminded me a lot of the frogger video game we played as kids.  Luckily we didn't get squashed.  As the wind turned into our face early in the morning around 8AM, we motor sailed the last 25 miles into Lymington,  Passing through the Needles and shingles bank was a real sight, see the video with this post.  The 10ft breaking waves were less than 150 meters away, a real shrinky dink, if you know what I mean.

We remain in Lymington getting the rest of our gear ready.  Harken UK is setting us up with the last of our gear including a new main sheet traveler and a few special blocks.  We'll be off again back to Cherbourg on Thursday to have all the last "punch list" items fixed and all the spare parts picked up and packed away.

Best Guess Schedule

Where are you going to be...?

A few people have been asking where are we going to be on such and such a date.  I've put together a little spreadsheet that has our probable stops and when we MIGHT be there.  Obviously I've made a lot of assumptions and we all know what that means.  But one has to have a plan no matter how flexible it has to be, so here is our PLAN A. (I have PLAN B, C, D,...in case things go south)

Leg	Distance nm	Days Sailing (120nm/day)	Start Date	End Date	Layover	Information on Port
Cherbourg - Lymington	70	0.58	3/12/2015	3/13/2015	21	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lymington
Lymington - Cowes	10	0.08	4/3/2015	4/4/2015	2	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowes
Cowes - Bembridge	15	0.13	4/6/2015	4/7/2015	2	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bembridge
Bembridge - Poole	45	0.38	4/9/2015	4/10/2015	3	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poole
Poole - Plymouth	105	0.88	4/13/2015	4/14/2015	3	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth
Plymouth - Falmouth	42	0.35	4/17/2015	4/18/2015	3	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falmouth,_Cornwall
Falmouth - Scilly Isles	65	0.54	4/21/2015	4/22/2015	3	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isles_of_Scilly
Scilly Isles - Dale, Wales	125	1.04	4/25/2015	4/27/2015	3	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale,_Pembrokeshire
Dale - Dublin, Ireland	120	1.00	4/30/2015	5/1/2015	2	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin
Dublin - Holyhead	62	0.52	5/3/2015	5/4/2015	3	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holyhead
Holyhead - Douglas, Isle of Man	54	0.45	5/7/2015	5/8/2015	2	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas,_Isle_of_Man
Douglas - Ardrishaig, Scotland	142	1.18	5/10/2015	5/12/2015	3	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardrishaig
Ardrishaig/Crinan Canal - Crinan	8	0.07	5/15/2015	5/16/2015	2	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crinan,_Argyll_and_Bute
Crinan - Oban	25	0.21	5/18/2015	5/19/2015	3	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oban
Oban - Fort Williams	29	0.24	5/22/2015	5/23/2015	2	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_William,_Scotland
Fort Williams - Inverness	52	0.43	5/25/2015	5/26/2015	3	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverness
Inverness - Stromness	106	0.88	5/29/2015	5/30/2015	3	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromness
Stromness - Torshavn	219	1.83	6/2/2015	6/4/2015	3	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%B3rshavn
Torshavn - Vestmannaeyjabaer	400	3.33	6/7/2015	6/11/2015	2	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestmannaeyjar
Vestmannaeyjabaer - Reykjavik	127	1.06	6/13/2015	6/15/2015	5	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reykjav%C3%ADk
Reykjavik - Nuuk	1260	10.50	6/20/2015	7/1/2015	7	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuuk
Nuuk - Disko Bay	340	2.83	7/8/2015	7/11/2015	5	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disko_Bay
Disko Bay - Upernavik	244	2.03	7/16/2015	7/19/2015	4	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upernavik
Upernavik - Pond Inlet/Dundas Harbour	398	3.32	7/23/2015	7/27/2015	5	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pond_Inlet
Dundas Harbour - Resolute	200	1.67	8/1/2015	8/3/2015	3	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolute,_Nunavut
Resolute - Gjoa Haven	522	4.35	8/6/2015	8/11/2015	3	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gjoa_Haven
Gjoa Haven - Cambridge Bay	260	2.17	8/14/2015	8/17/2015	3	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Bay
Cambridge Bay - Barrow	1090	9.08	8/20/2015	8/30/2015	3	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrow,_Alaska
Barrow - Dutch Harbor	1163	9.69	9/2/2015	9/12/2015	3	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Harbor
Dutch Harbor - Oahu	2034	16.95	9/15/2015	10/2/2015	2	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oahu
FINISH	9332	78		204

The only really semi firm dates are Nuuk by the first week in July and Dundas Harbour by the last week in July.  We need to be ready for the Northwest Passage when/if it opens, usually by the first week in August.  We'll be watching the ice charts and adjust accordingly.

Our friends Paul and Sheryl Shard recommend the Crinan and Caledonian Canals in Scotland and this is high on our list of places to visit.  Suggestions welcome...

Stelluca

Boots and Bags

Our friends at Stelluca, Melissa and Olli, have been making and supplying awesome upcycled bags and gear for ages.  These quality handmade items are great for the beach, sailing trips, iPads, wallets, you name it, they've built it.

They recently picked up the Zhik line of sailing gear designed in Australia.  We've read great things about the seaboots so we decided to buy two pair for Zetty and I.  I've found them to be very comfortable and warm, they seem to have a great grip, we'll see once we get aboard.

If you get a chance, please visit their website and check out the great gear!!  They also have a trailer that takes most of your sailing equipment and gear to the major regattas in the Midwest during the summer in case you forget something, break something or just want to upgrade the old duds!

Lou

Test Packing

The Test Pack - Part 1

I did the first test pack of the "hard" suitcases this morning.  I did manage to get all of the needed things into the first case.

Suitcase Number 1

In order to save a lot of space, I put most of the small things into ziploc bags.  You may ask why would we/I bring all this small stuff, easy because we can.  We get a total of 10 checked bags weighing 50lbs each which is a 1/4 ton of clothes and parts!  It should cut down on trying to find the hard stuff like laptop battery, Iridium battery, medical equipment, sail repair kit all of which were pinched off our old boat, Monkey's Orphan.  41 more days until we leave...