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

A week to go

Hazel and I are off work for a while, and set for a bit of an adventure. This will be our record of what we get up to, for us to look back on and for our friends and family to (we hope!) enjoy.

Last Friday I finished my handover in the Navy plans team and stopped being paid for a while. It has been an epic appointment and the last few weeks especially have been  extraordinary; I'm very lucky (and grateful) that notwithstanding events, the RN is sticking to the plan and I'm now away until August.  Genuinely sad to be leaving an amazing team, but also, honestly, very ready for a reset.  Stopping being paid having been in continuous work for the last quarter of a century is quite a shock to the system, I think I'm probably still adapting!  I'll be 're-joining' the RN in August to return to sea in the Autumn.

Hazel has finished her role at Southmead Hospital in Bristol, is now a fully qualified consultant (😎) and has started some initial preparatory work for her new role which starts in Salisbury in August.  This is mostly under control....and will continue be done in a few(?) hours per week remotely. My plan is to work out where there is no 4G signal.....

We are now both realising with a combination of excitement and panic that in a week today we will be setting sail into the Irish sea, Northbound.

Lots of preparation is done - the boat is in really sound shape now (well, will be until the next thing goes wrong), our admin is getting squared away, Hazel's motorbike is safely parked in my parent's garage (we are worried that my mother might be tempted to go for a spin) and at the weekend the car will go off on holiday for a few months.  Of course these is still a mountain of stuff to do - food, final checks on the boat, making sure the right stuff is onboard, working out what to bring (warm stuff) what to leave (erm.....) and some of the boring boat jobs that just go on and on. We have a final short check sail on Thursday, to make sure our new (to us) mainsail is all setup as we expect, and then done until we depart on the lunchtime tide on Monday.

I've been asked what the plan is a lot of times - and I'm a bit reluctant to tempt fate, but for what it is worth:  We have a series of hops planned between now and early April to include Milford Haven, Pwilli, hopefully Conwy, the Isle of Man, Strangford Loch, Arran, and then up to Rhu where I'll be dashing south briefly to scoop up Hektor and our first 'Crew' for the Easter around the islands.  From Rhu we plan to head down to the Crinian Canal and then base ourselves out of Oban for a while.

All of this is of course subject to the weather, broken bits of boat, or indeed, 'events' but a plan is a basis for change.....  After Oban, the plan is .... to have no plan.

For those who have not already been bored to tears by my banging on (and on) about Contour, she is an Endurance 40 Staysail Schooner built by the last owner, David, between 1977 and 1987.  This photo is her in 'all her glory' with all plain sail and our lovely reaching 'gollywobbler' between the main and foremast. She is ferro, teak, and iroko construction with aluminium spars and a very heavy construction.  None of the sails are self-furling, which Hazel and I both very much enjoy as we like deck-work and wrestling large bags of damp sails down hatches in the rain. She has a very ancient (recently rebuilt) Ford Sabre / Dorset diesel, sleeps 6, and in a decent breeze goes like a train.  Light winds are less spectacular, given that she weighs in at a stately 19 tonnes.  She is rock steady in a seaway, has a very open cockpit which is surprisingly sheltered, and all in all we think she is great.  When we decided 18 months ago to sell our beloved Black Dog and find a new and slightly larger boat, 'much less wood' and 'simple to sail' were both important characteristics..... leave you to judge how that went!

I'll try and post again once we have left, and there will be links (I hope) to this blog from our 'noforeignland' page which will automagically maintain a track on where we are, as long as we are in AIS range.  See https://www.noforeignland.com/boat/contour.

Planning to depart from Portishead next Monday....