Victualling

We spent most of he weekend doing still more boat prep.   The first task was to try and remove as much unnecessary clutter as possible.  This requires some negotiation between crew and Skipper as to what kit is, and is not essential...

That done, we motored round to the fuel berth and topped up to the brim with diesel and  fill some spare cans.  Back to the mooring and thence to the supermarket for a mega food shop.

While we intend to eat fresh food whenever possible and to eat out a couple of times a week, it seemed a good idea to stock up with cans and packets so that we have the flexibility to stay at sea or to use the more remote anchorages when he fancy takes us.  Goldfinch's bilges are therefore now crammed with tins of various types of nosh.  Chris (Mike's fiancée) had the brilliant idea of writing their contents on the tops so that they are visible from above.  I'm sure that this will be a great help.

One slightly worrying development was the amount of brown rice, wholemeal pasta etc.. which was insisted upon by the Mate.  This all sounds far too healthy to me.   I wonder if MacDonalds are offering a drone based delivery service yet?

Mike changing the deck light bulb with the Skipper
positioned below to break his fall if the halyard
snaps.

We were also delighted to see Rob Fisher again.  Rob is an old friend who I did an Atlantic crossing with a few years ago.  He happened to be in Ipswich and dropped by to wish us bon-voyage.

Other odd bits of maintenance took place, but with less than two weeks to go we would appear to be just about ready for departure.  It is all really rather exciting!

Patronage?

I read yesterday that it is was St Brendan's Day.   I never knew much about him before, other than that he is known as "The Navigator".

Apparently he was a 6th C Irish monk who set off with 14 other monks on a voyage to discover the Garden of Eden. On the way they have slag thrown at them by blacksmiths, encounter 'mountains of fire' (Iceland?) and light a fire on an island which turns out to be a giant sea monster called Jason.

He also preached a sermon from his boat to a group of highly attentive sea creatures.

They discovered Eden, although some say that it was actually North America (epic fail?) after which they all went home. 

Amongst other duties he is patron saint of elderly adventurers, so hopefully he can also look after us!

Less than a month to go

Introducing ourselves

Actually, if you have reached this page you will probably already know that Mike and I intend to sail Goldfinch around Britain in the summer of 2015.  Quite a few people have asked how they can follow our progress, and so to save our other halves being beset with enquiries, I have (slightly reluctantly) agreed to create this blog.

While I don't promise to update it in anything like 'real time' I am setting out with the intention of creating fairly regular posts so that people can see where we have got to and if anything interesting has happened.   If there hasn't been a post for a while, it probably doesn't mean that we have sunk, more likely that we are away from an internet connection, or (more probably) in a pub somewhere!

We also invite contributions from the various crew members and our friends who are reading this.

The plan

We aim to leave our home port of Ipswich on Sunday 7th June and to return in late August.   We will be travelling anti-clockwise and will be going via the Caledonian Canal, the Hebrides, Northern and Southern Ireland and Lands End.

A more detailed plan is shown below.

The Crew

Bryan, Skipper and co-owner of Goldfinch is a sometime IT Programme Manager who took early retirement a couple of years ago.  He will be joined by his wife Debbie and son Dan for some parts of the trip.  Bryan began sailing as a teenager and has been mucking about in boats ever since.  His job is basically to make sure that we end up where we started.

Mike, is a newly retired BT Manager.  This trip is a (sort of) retirement present to himself and a good line when his soon-to-be-ex colleagues ask him what he is going to be doing with himself.   As well as being First Mate, Mike has volunteered to be responsible for all the on-board catering.  This may probably be because be once tasted Bryan's cooking, but may also be down to the fact that he is actually a very good cook.  Slightly worryingly, Mike is a big fan of sailing fiction such as CS Forester and Alexander Kent so the rest of the crew are anxiously watching out for casks of salt pork and ship's biscuit being hoisted aboard. 

The other protagonists will be introduced as they join us        

The Route

As any sailor will tell you, a sailing boat sets off towards rather than to a destination and so the dates and places below are an approximate rather than a definite plan.  It is certain that things will change quite a bit as we go along, but there are certain points and dates arranged for crew changes which we we will be doing our best to meet.

Several people have asked why we are going round anti-clockwise.  In truth there is very little difference which way you go.  We decided on this route because there is a very slight statistical advantage in winds and tides, but more because it gets the more boring East Coast bits out of the way at an early stage.

Not to be used for navigation...

Date                           Location                           Miles

Sun	07/06/2015	0	Ipswich
Mon	08/06/2015	1	Lowestoft	40
Tues	09/06/2015	2	Wells	56
Wed	10/06/2015
Thurs	11/06/2015	3	Whitby	106
Fri	12/06/2015
Sat	13/06/2015
Sun	14/06/2015	5	Amble	65
Mon	15/06/2015
Tues	16/06/2015	6	Eyemouth	40
Wed	17/06/2015
Thurs	18/06/2015		Extra stop at Holy Island?
Fri	19/06/2015	7	Anstruther?	25
Sat	20/06/2015
Sun	21/06/2015	8	Arbroath	46
Mon	22/06/2015	9	Stonehaven	34
Tues	23/06/2015
Wed	24/06/2015	10	Peterhead	35
Thurs	25/06/2015
Fri	26/06/2015	11	Banff	34
Sat	27/06/2015	12	Inverness (canal entrance)	60
Sun	28/06/2015		Caledonian canal
Mon	29/06/2015		Caledonian canal
Tues	30/06/2015		Caledonian canal
Wed	01/07/2015		Fort William	60
Thurs	02/07/2015		Loch Aline	30
Fri	03/07/2015		Tobermory	13
Sat	04/07/2015
Sun	05/07/2015		Iona	50
Mon	06/07/2015		other places in Hebrides?
Tues	07/07/2015		other places in Hebrides?
Wed	08/07/2015		other places in Hebrides?
Thurs	09/07/2015		other places in Hebrides?
Fri	10/07/2015		Port Ellen	52
Sat	11/07/2015		Glenarm or Ballycastle NI	50
Sun	12/07/2015		Bangor NI (Belfast)	30
Mon	13/07/2015
Tues	14/07/2015
Wed	15/07/2015		Ardglass	33
Thurs	16/07/2015		Peel (IoM)	70
Fri	17/07/2015
Sat	18/07/2015		Carlingford Lough	80
Sun	19/07/2015
Mon	20/07/2015		Malahide	46
Tues	21/07/2015		Dun Laoghaire (Dublin)	13
Wed	22/07/2015		break
Thurs	23/07/2015		break
Fri	24/07/2015		break
Sat	25/07/2015		break
Sun	26/07/2015		break
Mon	27/07/2015		break
Tues	28/07/2015		break
Wed	29/07/2015		break
Thurs	30/07/2015		break
Fri	31/07/2015		Arklow	40
Sat	01/08/2015		Milford Haven	81
Sun	02/08/2015		(Poss via Padstow?)
Mon	03/08/2015		Falmouth	133
Tues	04/08/2015
Wed	05/08/2015
Thurs	06/08/2015		River Yealm	44
Fri	07/08/2015
Sat	08/08/2015		Dartmouth	35
Sun	09/08/2015
Mon	10/08/2015
Tues	11/08/2015		Weymouth	65
Wed	12/08/2015		Portsmouth	50
Thurs	13/08/2015
Fri	14/08/2015		Brighton	50
Sat	15/08/2015		Dover	89
Sun	16/08/2015		Ipswich	80

The boat

Goldfinch is a Beneteau 36.  She was built in 1997 and has been in our ownership for six years.   She sleeps six people in reasonable comfort and boasts some reasonably modern facilities such as an oven, hot shower and central heating.

  

Under sail, she can cruise at around 6-7 knots and has a big (for her size) 40hp diesel engine for when the wind doesn't blow as we would wish it to.  This is usually! 

Slightly unusually, Goldfinch has a centre cockpit and a hard windscreen.  There are some pros and cons with this configuration, however it does give us the ability to sit on-watch out of the wind and rain most of the time.

   

We have two working sails.  An in-mast furling mainsail and a large foresail or genoa.   There is also a cruising chute which is a bit like a spinnaker and this is very handy when there is a lightish wind bowing from somewhere roughly behind us.   

The ability to 'reef' or reduce sail without leaving the cockpit is a very useful safety feature and means that the boat can be comfortably sailed by just two people.  As we shall have three on board for most of the trip this means that one can be below getting some rest when needed.

We have had a fair bit of work done over the winter to ensure that all is reasonably well with the boat maintenance-wise,  however one of the challenges of such a trip is that some things are bound to mis-behave and part of the fun will be learning how to fix or do without them...