Good grief, are we actually going to go?

Avy-J with her new stackpack

Check out the new stack pack in the header above!

July 2020 and it’s three years since we bought Avy-J – three years of work, expense and disappointment as we have postponed our departure date twice then faced coronavirus, a poorly cat and health issues. Not to mention Brexit.

But now we have a boat that is ready to go, a new home for the cat and a willing and able crew member to share the hard work of taking the boat to Portugal. The boat is fully equipped for the trip and we are pretty much ready to go. There is a last chance feel about it; if we get the boat there before the end of the year it will be an EU boat, deemed VAT registered, which is something, and I intend to look into Portuguese residence as a way out of the Brexit nightmare.

Swirly Thing Alert
Normally we would route down the Irish coast, to Dublin, Kilmore Quay and so to the Scillies, but Ireland is still closed to ‘foreign’ yachts, so the plan at the moment is Ardglass then across to Holyhead.

Just need a sweet run of Northerlies to see us down the Irish Sea, but at the moment Windy is showing a huge low pressure system for the end of next week that could postpone our departure for a few days.

Wish us luck and watch this space.

Windlass Fitted

Lofrans Royal

One of the pre-departure jobs was to finally fit the Lofrans Royal manual windlass we got at a bargain price last year. Many thanks once again to Darren Taylor of Mainsail Marine for his help with this. The job involved cutting the anchor locker lid and using the aft section to effectively extend the deck and mount the windlass. The tricky bit was leaving the forward (opening) part big enough to be able to stow the 9Kg Knox anchor inside the locker on passage.