Food, final checks, and weather.

Our plan for this trip involves keeping ourselves as independent as possible, and the last few days' activities have mainly revolved around food and sundry supplies.

We are not (in the big scheme of things) going for that long, but when a menu is worked out and multiplied up over a few months, the answer comes in at.... a lot of cans!  So the last few days have been a series of trips to and from the boat, loading food and stores on, and removing sundry stuff we won't need.  Keeping a track of where all those cans, bottles, and packets go is part of this, as is making sure they won't rattle or damage stuff where they are stowed, and marking the tins so if the worst comes to the worst and wet labels fall off, we avoid unfortunate culinary combinations so far as possible!  Add to this kit for Hektor when he is with us, camping gear, spares, oils, and it becomes somewhat of an epic.  Our 'pre-departure' prep list was started in September, had a 'Must / Should / Could' list of which all of the 'must', much of the 'should', and even some of the 'could' have been ticked off. 

Portishead is a fantastic place to prepare a boat; there is a chandler / marine engineer on hand, as well as a Co-op, Lidl, Waitrose, Aldi, 'zero waste' / green store, a decent high street, and probably most importantly a fantastic cafe (Mokoko) and superb Fish and chip shop. In the area around there is a very helpful sailmaker in the form of Marcus at Bristol Sails, as well as great engineering and boat skills in the area.  The 'Boatfolk' company that run the marina at Portishead also run a boat lift and yard for work - so all in all, we have been well set to get Contour ready.

On Thursday we ventured out for a (very) short sail to check that our new (to us) mainsail was up to scratch - which it is.  Our last sea trial had been a resounding success - like all good sea trials, it identified some stuff to fix.....most notably the mainsail which became two rather ragged mainsails in a 40 knot gust (when reefed).  Given that it is 30 odd years old we decided that a replacement was in order; cue hurried search and we were lucky enough to find a second hand sail (from a large Dufour of all things) which fits a treat. The new reefing arrangements are a big improvement, and it sets really very well.  We had a good, fast sail in a gusty South Easterly; Contour touched 8 knots a couple of times and remains nicely balanced with a single reef and the No2 yankee (headsail) up. A huge relief!

Once tucked back in, Hazel with a bit of help from Dan (thanks Dan!) had the unenviable task of lugging me up the masts to give them a careful once over; we are massively over-rigged and aside from some lubrication of the sheaves when up there, all was well.

So - final couple of days; all the stuff is onboard, we need to buy some final fresh food on Monday morning, and then aiming for the lunchtime tide and the first leg will be towards Milford Haven, probably with an anchorage somewhere around Swansea on the way for a turn of the tide..... we will aim to write more from Milford Haven.

All eyes turn to the weather now - looking light gentle breezes for our departure and then a series of lows across the North Atlantic, with a blocking ridge looking ok..... for now..... fingers and toes crossed!

You can follow our progress on our boat page at noforeignland.com