Category: Sailing in General
-
Cutty Sark Sadolin Ultra Varnish Failure
9th February 2013 Greenwich I was shocked at the poor condition of the varnish on the newly restored Cutty Sark. These pictures are now about a month old (January 2013) but I have noticed the varnish has got even worse since. The ship only opened in the summer and there is varnish failure on almost every…
-
Brantho Kurrox 3 in 1
As Christmas looms closer and most people are finishing their Christmas shopping or decorating the tree I seem to have decided it is the ideal time to tackle the rust on Sumara’s Kubota engine. Sometimes the saying “If a jobs worth doing it’s worth doing properly” just has to be put aside. There was no…
-
Weymouth to Swanage and Lymington
Log ??? 15th September 2012 I took the train to Weymouth with Nicky, a good friend of Grits. Nicky had completed her Competent Crew course in 2010 but hadn’t had much of an opportunity to use it after a planned voyage had fallen through. Terry Newman, who built Sumara and lives in Weymouth, would join us in the…
-
Plymouth to Dartmouth
26th August 2012 Log 8744 Approx. Distance 38nm Grit caught the train back to London on Saturday morning and Gudrun was coming down in the evening. It rained stair rods all day so I wasn’t missing out on anything. A few boaty jobs got done and then I donned full foul weather gear to meet Gudrun at…
-
Aberystwyth towards Falmouth
Log 8498 Distance approx 230nmGrit and I arrived in Aber (as they call it) on Thursday 17th August to have a day preparing and provisioning before setting off towards Falmouth. We went to the Christopher Williams exhibition again where I was surprised to meet Jannicke (I’ll put up a nice picture of her later). In…
-
Torsten in Aberystwyth
How nice it was to bump into Torsten during our visit to the National Library of Wales! Torsten is, of course, one of the worlds experts regarding sea bed geology. There can hardly be a sand or mud bank along the east coast that Torsten doesn’t know intimately. I remember sailing from Ramsgate to Dover in dense fog when…
-
Port St Mary to Aberystwyth
We reckoned the best time to leave would be 18:00 but the sun was out so we left at about 15:00 with a very gentle southerly breeze. The wind gradually veered to become a westerley generally around force 3-4 but with a couple of light patches which meant a few hours of motoring. We sailed…
-
The Mull of Kintyre
By now we knew we were the last boat to leave Jura for Arran. Barbara, who was one of the organisers had politely asked if we were still competing. “Of course we are” was Charlotte’s reply. To get to Lamlash on Arran we would have to round the Mull of Kintyre – a notorious headland…
-
Rowing Past the Corryvreckan
I confess that we had been a little worried on-board the ship as the runners had taken longer than we expected. We knew one runner from another team had to be air lifted off, and we were much relieved when a text arrived from Charlotte saying they were on the road back. Once the tired,…
-
“Land Ahoy”
Position N56,41 x W006,41 Wind F4 Westerly rather unstable. Now we are sailing downwind through the Sea of theHebrides with Coll on our starboard bow. We hit some rough seas as the depth dropped from 1000m to about 100m but it is more peaceful now except for the occasional viscous squall which drives through with…