Well, what a blast. After 10 years of dreaming and 18 months of serious planning, we are about to set off on our adventure with the goal of sailing around the world.

On the 17th June we are setting off from our Gosport berth, sailing our way South towards Tenerife, where we will join the Cornell Islands Odyssey to Cape Verde and then Barbados – planning to arrive in the Caribbean before Christmas this year.

That image of sunshine and swimwear, sipping an ice cold G&T in some exotic location has been far from our reality over the last few weeks, however. Since moving onto Lady Jane we have been subject to 12 hour days of hard labour cleaning, sanding, and maintaining. Then another hour tending wounds and bruises. Finger nails? Forget them.

We have installed more safety equipment than you could shake a chandlers at. And moving from a four bedroom house into a 42′ boat has helped develop an uncanny knack of finding storage spaces where some might think none exist. Windows and hatches have been replaced, bilges have been cleaned – and are now storing an embarrassment of booze.

Solar panels have been added, which should keep us self-sufficient in terms of power needs. The watermaker is working, the satellite phone can receive weather forecasts, the man-overboard alerting system works, and the crew of two are physically fit thanks to all that graft. 

So, we are now more than ready to go – not least of all because we need a holiday.

One of the items we have added to our collection is a YB3 tracker. This sends a position report to a server via the Iridium satellite network where it can be viewed on a map. In practical terms this enables us to share our position with people on this website so that you can share our adventure with us.

Our first port of call isn’t so exotic. I mean no disrespect to Portland marina, but I suspect that anyone reading this would prefer to hear more about locations a few miles south of the UK. We need to pick up a spinnaker pole from the very-patient Andy Gordon of AG Rigging, who has had my spinnaker pole stored in his shed for well over a year.

From there it is off to France and the Channel Islands, but not necessarily in that order. And we plan to keep this blog updated as we go to share a little something about where we are and what we are up to.

Cheers!

Allen and Maria