a family sailing blog
Our Original Plan was to leave Roses and head South to the Balearic Islands. Heather, however, had other plans. You see, many moons ago Heather lived in France for a year and fell in love with a French boy. Ever since, she has had a soft spot for the place. All she needs to hear... Continue Reading →
After 6 weeks of very hard work, we are back in the water and had our first sail on Friday! We are all happy and relieved to have Vega back, where she belongs, in the water. It was a massive week leading up to the launch which included fitting our new engine. This was quite... Continue Reading →
While the rudder has taken up lots of our time, we haven’t been slacking off on other fronts. In the last two weeks we have removed our old holding tank and all its pipework from the boat. This was an awful job as the pipework was full of the previous owners foul smelling poo!! The poo... Continue Reading →
It’s been a big week, but, after all our problems with the rudder it is finally back on! We would have struggled to do it without the help of my dad. He managed to find the copper bar in the UK and turn us a set of new rivets on his lathe. He then bought... Continue Reading →
Like buying a house, when you buy a yacht you get a survey done…we had one done, but our surveyor failed to find a crack in our steering quadrant. Sounds serious? Well it is, and I’m glad we discovered it now rather than halfway across the Atlantic. Bad news, but with 2 kids on board…doesn’t... Continue Reading →
All yachties are keen on their knots and Heath and I have just finished a nice 8 strand rope to 10mm anchor chain splice, and it’s a ripper. What’s it do? Well, boats need anchors so they stay where you leave them. The anchors are attached to chain. We have 60m of chain on board.... Continue Reading →
Since the wind stopped we have had a lot going on. Anyone who has bought and fitted out a cruising yacht will know that getting to grips with a new boat takes time. To have the confidence to set off on your voyage you need to get to understand all the boats systems – so... Continue Reading →
We are currently sitting inside our yacht, perched on a trailer (with an alarmingly narrow wheel base) in a boatyard in Northern Spain. While we sip our Catalan Red wine we are debating how badly injured we will get if things don’t go our way and Vega is blown off her trailer onto the concrete... Continue Reading →
Still tired and a bit disorientated we arrived in Barcelona on Sunday night, jumped in our hire car and navigated our way 2 hours north to Roses, Spain. The next morning we got to see Vega for the first time. It was a strange feeling, finally seeing something you feel you know intimately through discussion,... Continue Reading →
I always seem to plan things...I think its the engineer in me looking for structure...a linear course from A to B. Heather, my wife, plans nothing. She just wades into new situations with a confidence that when things turn to custard, she will eat the custard, lick the bowl clean and go in for a second... Continue Reading →
a yacht more to life 