Renaming a boat is something that seems to strike fear into the hearts of superstitious sailors everywhere. Apparently it’s really bad luck to change the name of a boat, even if the current name is a bit rubbish. If you are brave enough to anger the gods by changing a boat name, then there, Read More
I’d been looking forward to “hauling out day” for about a month. It marked the official end of our first sailing season and would be the start of a new chapter in the book that I’m going to write about all of this when I get around to it (although I said that about, Read More
The learning curve of an inexperienced, new boat owner has been a lot steeper than I expected. Owning and fixing up an older sailing boat for cruising the world has been much more of an emotional roller coaster ride that I was prepared for. During the first five months, we have had many boat, Read More
After buying our Oyster 435 sailing boat in Ipswich, absolutely nowhere near our home, we needed to get the boat back to Portsmouth so we could start preparing her for our sailing adventure. Getting her from Ipswich to Portsmouth involved crossing the terrifying Thames Estuary, riddled with sand banks, wind farms and massive ships,, Read More
Every sailing boat needs cool boat stuff! People planning to sail the world, sailboat cruisers and liveaboard families definitely need cool gadgets and fun stuff on their boat. From towable water toys to cool drones to spear guns! So here’s our list of cool boat gadgets that we really, really want on our boat, Read More
This is the story of how we negotiated and renegotiated the price of our boat, after getting a marine survey. It’s a summary of how we searched for a boat, found a boat, made an offer on a boat, had a boat survey done, haggled, negotiated, whinged, cried and eventually, handed over a huge, Read More
Buying your first boat is a crazy, terrifying, exciting, frustrating and above all, expensive business. Buying a used sailing boat is even worse. There are so many traps to fall into, so many untruths to uncover, so many complicated procedures to follow. We’ve just about managed to stumble our way through to boat ownership., Read More
A whole two months have passed since we purchased our 1990 Oyster 435 sailing boat. And what a two months it has been! Our slightly naive plan was to buy our perfect boat at the start of the UK sailing season and be sailing confidently around the Solent by the end of said season,, Read More
Buying a sailing boat isn’t as easy as it sounds. When you are a sailing novice and a boat buying newbie, the choices can be overwhelming. This is a quick idiot’s guide to how we narrowed down our search and bought a boat. If you’re thinking of buying a sailing yacht for a world-wide sailing, Read More
Someone famous once said that all great journeys start with a single step. If that’s the case, then the delayed 06:50 to London would appear to be the step that sets us off on the path to starting our sailing adventure. It’s a beautiful fresh and crisp spring morning, exactly the sort that I’m, Read More
