Living on a boat

Many people dream of sailing away and living on a boat in faraway tropical destinations with tall palm trees and white sand beaches, swimming in crystal clear, turquoise seas surrounded by turtles and dolphins, and drinking copious amounts of rum while watching the sun set below the horizon.  But what is it really like, Read More

The British ensign

On Monday 13th August 2018, we sailed out of Port Solent Marina in Portsmouth, UK, on our biggest adventure yet.  An adventure to explore the world using a sailing boat as our base and home.  

New mast

“Of course you don’t need a new mast.  Nobody has ever replaced a mast on an Oyster!” That’s what we were told over and over again, by rigger after rigger and surveyor after surveyor.  But here we are, many months later, with our brand new mast gleaming in the sunlight.  Over in Sweden, a, Read More

Sailing boat ashore

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

Wins and fails of a first time boat owner

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

Sailing

I’ve now got just over seven months of early morning train action under my belt, commuting from Portsmouth on the 06:34 to London, it’s high time for a bit of reflective writing.  I’m looking back on the highs and lows of the commute, boat ownership and our first summer of sailing.  Things have definitely, Read More

Negotiating boat price after a marine survey

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