Giles and Paula's Great Retirement Adventure
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Congratulations @Giles and Paula.
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Update on orcas. One theory is gaining traction
https://newatlas.com/biology/orcas-killer-whales-boats/ -
Last weekend, Paula and did some mooring buoy practice, we think that we may have to pick up a few in Brittany if we are to avoid marinas. Suffice to say we were crap at it. The bow of SAKURA is very high, which makes hooking the buoy a challenge, and then when you do its nigh on impossible to reach down and get a warp through the ring of the buoy. In the end I lassooed it, but to the attach the warp safely to the buoy, I needed to get into the tender. Thats impractical to do on a regular basis. So, I have been scratching my head, working out a better method.
The solution I have come up, is to back onto the buoy and temporarily hook the ring on top of the buoy with a hook attached to a stern cleat. I’ll have a warp coming from a bow cleat to the stern outboard of everything. Once we are attached with the hook, we can put the bitter end of the bow line through the ring, take the hook off and lead the buoy to the bow. Here’s the hooky thing I have spliced onto a rope to attach to the stern cleat.
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And, if we are not in a marina, or on a mooring buoy, we'll be anchoring. So, I wanted a short-stay anchor snubber.
I made a larger one last year, which we will use when over-nighting or if we expect high winds or strong currents, but I wanted an easy to deploy one for shorter stays/benign conditions.
Doing an eye splice in double-braid is essentially easy, but you need to be careful with the measurements. I was not, so my first attempt at the large eye-splice was rubbish. I slept on my failure and did it again with a load more measure thrice, cut once....
I'll attach the snubber to the chain with the carabiner....
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@Giles Here's something you might enjoy: https://marine.wichard.com/en/stainless-steel-hardware/shackles
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Beauty of a tool!!!
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That is Sakura’s most handsome leash to date. -
@Madame-Buttonfly and I are in the final stages of prepping for an 8 or 9-week journey in SAKURA to Brittany (and maybe a bit of Normandy on the way home). I've been making sure that the boat is ready for the trip, filling up with diesel and water, making sure that everything is working, that we have sufficient spares, and moving stuff around on the helm so it is in a more logical position. We've filled all available fridge, freezer, larder and harder to get to storage space with victuals. I need to get some clothes and a bit more fishing tackle on board and we will be ready to go.
We plan to leave early Wednesday afternoon and take advantage of the favourable current to help us on the way to Studland Bay, where we will pick up a buoy, or drop the anchor for the night. On Thursday at first light, or a little before, we'll head to Alderney, the northernmost of the Channel Islands and a passage of about 50nm.
We'll spend a couple of days in Alderney and then head for the north Brittany coast via Jersey or Guernsey (to top up with tax and duty-free fuel). All of this is a bit fluid, because we are obviously completely dependent on the weather.
In broad terms we will muddle down the coast of Brittany going no further than Vannes, where we will spend a week with some of my French fishing pals. Then we turn around and muddle back again. If we have time and the inclination, we'll do the Normandy D Day beaches and then head back across the channel, and home.
Our preference will be to avoid marinas as much as possible, but in much of the northern part of our trip, we will be dealing with 10 meter tides, we have enough chain to deal with that, but massive tidal ranges present 2 issues, at low water, you have a hell of a long scope to rotate around the anchor, and at high water, what you thought was a nice sheltered bay at low water, is now super-exposed. Added to all that Paula and I are relative beginners, so we don't want to bite off more than we can chew
I've estimated about 1,200nm for the trip. Let's see how accurate I am....
"OK face up to it - you're useless but generally pretty honest and straightforward . . . it's a rare combination of qualities that I have come to admire in you" - Geo 2011
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Thank you. And sorry to miss you when you are here doing your day-skip. Would have loved to have met up. Have a ball, it's a breeze compare to the theory.....
"OK face up to it - you're useless but generally pretty honest and straightforward . . . it's a rare combination of qualities that I have come to admire in you" - Geo 2011
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@Giles I may have missed this elsewhere, but are you progressing on downsizing the main residence?
This trip sounds incredible. everything from sailing into new places and seeing historical beaches, all the way down to stopping at a pier side stand to grab grilled anchovy's or whatever little local shit you can bring back to the boat.
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@jordanscollected said in Giles and Paula's Great Retirement Adventure:
whatever little local shit you can bring back to the boat.
Mainly Oysters.
Sea Bass fishing along this coast is stupendous, so I'll be doing a lot of that.
We have the house on the market. We have had 5 viewings, but as each viewing came and went, and we listened to the comments the prospects had, Paula and I realised that we simply aren't going to find something as nice and as quiet locally, and frankly if we move away from Gosport, we probably couldn't afford it either. So it is still on the market atm, but we have asked that no special marketing is done to drum up interest whilst we are away. A move was going to cost us a lot, so we think we'd rather invest that money into keeping the big house going until it's time to properly downsize or die, whichever comes first.
