Should we be buying a battleship instead of a Bavaria?

I recently read of a man who sailed around the world with his family. He had his yacht designed and built specifically for his voyage. It was made of steel to help the chances of it surviving a collision with a steel container that might be floating just beneath the surface of the water. Also he carried a firearm aboard, to use against any pirates that might attempt to board his vessel. Reading about this made me think about whether we were buying the right boat; should we be buying our own battleship instead?

Now our voyage around GB won't quite be the same as a circumnavigation of the world, but all the same.....there may just be some sneaky steel container lurking just below the water surface and exactly in our path. This thought has exercised our minds on several previous occasions during cross-channel passages, especially at night. I do hope we don't have to find out how we would cope!

......and we don't get many pirates around the UK fortunately, so hopefully we won't need any firearms aboard. If any undesirables present themselves, hopefully there will be other effective ways of dealing with them.

We'll just have to hope our luck continues to hold out!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to anyone who happens to be reading this blog! Tradition has it that sailing boats mount a Christmas tree at the top of the mast, like in the image below. Somehow I suspect we won't bother with that on Blue Star, not that we are against tradition - its just that we are likely to be in our own warm homes rather than aboard Blue Star during Christmas.

Talking of Blue Star, you may have noticed that we now have a website for Blue Star itself! Just click on the Blue Star logo and you will be taken to it! www.thebluestar.co.uk

I hope you enjoy your Christmas!

Traditional location of a Christmas tree on board a sailing boat

Our new logo!

........so I met with Gary and Greg from Verso Creative, the people who work for Woolcool on their marketing strategy. They came up with our brilliant new logo for our yacht and for our Round Great Britain Challenge which we are really pleased with - you can see it on the right of this blog, and below too. Don't you think it's great!? If anyone wants any help with marketing work I can't recommend them highly enough. Well done Verso Creative!

History on our doorstep

One of the things I like about coastal cruising is visiting places of historic interest. On our recent trip from Southampton to London we ventured up the river Medway where the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery lies, complete with 1500 tons of explosive. One of the reasons the explosive has never been removed is that there is a chance it could ignite spontaneously - in an earlier similar situation whilst attempting to remove explosive from a ship off Folkestone the ordnance exploded with such force as to cause shock waves equivalent to 4.5 on the Richter scale! One estimate suggests that if the SS Richard Montgomery exploded it would cause a 300m width of water to be thrown 3km (!!!!) into the air, and the blast would shatter nearly every window in Sheerness! The ship itself is just visible above the water (see below), and an exclusion zone is marked by several buoys which mark the wreck. Fascinating!

The wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery

Its not really like this.....

A woman was having a medical problem - her husband was snoring very loudly and every night ! So she called the doctor one morning, and asked him if there was anything he could do to relieve her "suffering."
"Well, there is one operation I can perform that will cure your husband" said the doctor, "but it is really rather expensive. It will cost you £10,000 down, and payments of £1000 for 36 months, plus payments for extras of course.
"My goodness!" the woman exclaimed, "that sounds like I'm buying a yacht!"
"Humm," the doctor murmured, "too obvious, huh?"

I found the above joke on 'tinterweb'. I thought this one was amusing too:

 A young wife, her boorish husband and a young good-looking sailor were shipwrecked on an island.

One morning, the sailor climbed a tall coconut tree and yelled, "Stop making love down there!"
"What's the matter with you?" the husband said when the sailor climbed down. '"We weren't making love."
"Sorry," said the sailor, "From up there it looked like you were."
Every morning thereafter, the sailor scaled the same tree and yelled the same thing. Finally the husband decided to climb the tree and see for himself.
With great difficulty, he made his way to the top.
The husband says to himself, "By golly he's right! It DOES look like they're making love down there!"

We will of course need a good supply of jokes to keep the crew amused during our circumnavigation of GB. I rather like the one about the crab walking into the bar and demanding a drink......but you'll have to ask me about that one as it requires some hand action to fully appreciate it!

Which are your favourite sailing jokes?

All quiet on the boat-buying front.....

There seems to be a temporary hiatus in the boat-buying process. We are waiting to be assigned a date when the boat will be sailed to mainland Britain, which will also be our opportunity to have our test sail in her. She will be sailed to Swanwick on the Hamble, where she will then be inspected by a surveyor before we complete the purchase, probably by 1 Feb now. That will give us about 3 months to get any updates/improvements etc. made to the boat before a planned launch in early May. There will then be some 'shake down' cruises to check that everything performs as it should, before we embark on our circumnavigation of GB!

Boats shouldn't wear grass skirts.....

Last Tuesday I gave a talk to Stafford Coastal Cruising Club about my experiences during various Round The Island Races. Thus far, all my skippering experience in this event has been on chartered boats. One charter operator I used for a while was very honest and helpful when I made clear my concern that the hull should be clean in preparation for the race. This year, however, we used a different operator who also assured me that the boat's hull would be clean. On hand-over it became clear that it wasn't. The official on hand at the time 'didn't know anything about sailing boats'; apparently he was a 'motor boat' man, and was there just to do the paper work for hand over. Anyway, to cut a long story short we made do with the boat as it was, with its little grass skirt growing around the hull at the water line. It wasn't as bad as the boat shown below, which featured in my talk at the club, but it wasn't good either.

Needless to say, we didn't win the race in 2014! Next time might just be in our own boat, properly prepared and with all the right kit. Should be an easy win then, don't you think?

A new star is born!

Yesterday Roger and I finally reached an agreement with a vendor on the purchase of our yacht, a Bavaria 37. She is in great shape, although there are some maintenance tasks and updates that we want to take care of. If all goes according to plan we will become the owners of 'Blue Star' on 1 Feb 2015. How exciting is that!

Great news on the sponsorship front too. Staffordshire University have agreed to sponsor our project!

Cape Wrath - what's in a name?

Why does it have to be called Cape Wrath anyway? Why not Cape Comfortable? It rolls off the tongue quite nicely don't you think? And I would feel much happier about planning the passage, and look forward to it all the more.....

I wonder what the forecast says today....

A bit worrying......

I keep on catching myself dwelling on the fact that Cape Wrath, the most northerly point in mainland Britain, is further north than Cape Horn is south! Hmmmmm! Then I look at what the inshore weather forecast is in the Cape Wrath area, and it usually is not particularly good! Have you looked recently? Probably says 'sea state - rough'. Fortunately it does not say this all the time, so it is simply a matter of carefully picking the right time to sail. Same as anywhere else really! So, nothing to worry about there then! Good! That's alright then! No worries!

Hmmmm. I wonder what the forecast will be tomorrow? Hhhmmmm.

Fresh food on board our boat!

I always find it very satisfying to sit around the saloon table eating a meal with the crew after a good day's sailing. Somehow the exertions of the day seem to make the occasion all the more relaxing. One thing we will need during our trip is a good way of keeping our ship's supplies fresh, ready for said meal. Fortunately, our sponsors Woolcool have exactly the product we will need to keep our supplies cool. Come to think of it, they are pretty cool people themselves! Thank you Woolcool!

Angela Morris, CEO of Woolcool, and Keith Spilsbury, MD

Progress......

Yesterday I took a train ride to Essex to view a boat with Roger. It was a nice boat, but there are others we want to look at too.

Great news today! Woolcool, the manufacturers of environmentally friendly thermal insulation, have agreed to sponsor our boat! How brilliant is that! Thank you Woolcool!

There are still opportunities for others to sponsor our boat too, so I hope there will be more good news soon!

....its all in the planning!

Although the start of our big sail is some months away, there still seems to be lots of preparation to do! I find myself thinking most days now about this trip, and making a note of things to do....and yes, even doing some of them!

The boat obviously needs to be bought - we have our eyes on a number of possibilities at the moment, so we need to get on with viewing them. What percentage of the asking price should one bid for a boat? Then we need to consider all the features we would like/need on the boat: radar, AIS, TV (I know), cockpit VHF radio repeater, chart-plotter and cockpit repeater, life-raft, inflatable with outboard, power windlass, charts, pilot books, .... the list goes on!

Then there is organising the crew! We have managed to set up a likely sailing schedule (but of course the actual sailing schedule may turn out to be different due to weather etc.), and we now need to encourage friends etc to sign up!

The fund raising aspect is currently resting heavily on my mind. I hope friends will sponsor me/us, but I want to try to arrange some commercial sponsorship too (this may prove difficult, but is worth a try). Getting on with this today!

Public announcement!

Today I was made a Fellow of Burton and South Derbyshire College! See me in my finery below! I was able to use the opportunity to publicly announce my intention to circumnavigate GB and to raise money for CF. There was interest in the project from a potential employer sponsor, and also a possibility of working with BSDC on the project too. Very pleased!

The academic parade through Burton town centre

Hello and Welcome

Hello and welcome to my web site! This is an account of my sail around Great Britain in stages over the course of two years, 2015 to 2016. It is a project motivated by a desire to see much more of the coastline of this wonderful country where I live, and also to raise funds for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. I was motivated to do this sail after reading accounts of others who have done it, and when my friend Roger was equally enthusiastic about the idea. I would love to hear from others who are doing it, or have done it, or from anyone who has an interest in sailing. Do please follow the progress of this project by way of this blog, which I will aim to update on a regular basis. I do hope that you enjoy reading it!
Michael.

A recent trip to Eastbourne - rather busy in the lock!