Update

We have finally exchanged contracts on the house and we've found somewhere to rent for the time being. We're just waiting on references and credit checks before that's confirmed for definite but there shouldn't be any problems (fingers crossed)

The hunt for Bigger Boat goes on. There's nothing leaping out from the web pages saying "buy me" at the moment but there's a few possibilities. We're not rushing because we'll have a clear idea of exactly how much cash we've got in another few weeks

Latest developments...

It's tricky at the moment deciding which blog to post to! The latest update has gone on the Erbas blog as it involved sleeping on Erbas. Read all about it at A winter weekend ...

No boat yet but went to the boat show anyway

But first, the latest developments in the continuing saga of the house move ...

The Structural Engineer recommended a CCTV survey of the drainage system at the back of the house to ensure the cracks in the brickwork aren't being caused by seepage from the drains into the footings

OK, fair enough, but it's yet more delays and yet more expense. We don't yet know the specifics of the structural survey anyway but at this stage our buyers are still in the game although it is not clear on what basis

To make matters worse, the drainage engineer's CCTV equipment died first thing this morning on his first job and he's had to whistle up a replacement which means he can't come and check our drains until Wednesday

So it looks like it will be at least the back end of this week, or more likely next week, before we know where we stand. 

All of this is just piling more direct and indirect expense onto our already strained original budget and whilst we're not yet in a position to make a definite decision (which may be taken out of our hands anyway) it's looking less and less likely we'll be able to afford to buy "Safe Return". She was somewhat over budget to start with and now it looks like a budget is going to be the thick end of £8k or more less than we thought ....

We're not yet seriously looking at alternatives but we think we're going to have to look for something suitable in the £20k to £30k price range. I doubt we'd find anything quite as perfect for our needs as the Vulcan but needs must if it comes to it. It is frustrating, to say the least, to be unable to let Carol know for certain one way or the other but with "Safe Return" back on the market anyway (and rightly so) I guess it doesn't particularly matter one way or the other.

This whole business of buying and selling houses in England is a complete pain in the bum. If we weren't so keen to move forward with our new lifestyle I'd throw in the towel and forget it right now!

Anyway, whatever the outcome at some point we will be buying something bigger than "Erbas" so a trip to the London Boat Show was in order to do a bit of research. It was a well worthwhile expedition as well as a fun day out. We went with our friends from the Good Ship Laurin and met up with other friends whilst there which made it a very pleasant social occasion.

I was able to get hands on with the electronics I have my eye on for "bigger boat" (and it's likely that whatever we buy I'll want to upgrade to an integrated networked system) and decided that in fact I would be very happy with less rather than more in the display department.

I also had the opportunity to have a close look at the instrument / MFD pod I had in mind for the helm position and found that it is way too big for anything we'd be likely to buy (and way bigger all round than it needs to be for what can be fitted in it)

I took my cue from one or two of the display yachts and decided the better solution will be a bracket for the MFD at the helm rather than a pod allowing the MFD to be removed below decks when not in use.

I was also delighted to find that Raymarine, my preferred solution, have launched a new pulse radar at the show which neatly plugs the one gap in their range

Another area I had a look at is custom bedding. It's all very well making do with sheets that don't fit, quilts that are the wrong shape and foam planks for mattresses when you're only on board for a week or two at a time but when you're going to be living on board the expense for the sake of some real comfort looks well worthwhile (and our friends were all merrily putting down deposits on fitted sprung mattresses too!)

So although we're not sure what we're going to end up with boat wise, our ideas of what we're going to do when we get her are shaping up.

The one saving grace now is that we're under no real pressure. It will all either happen in the next few weeks or it will take months or even a year but we're just going with the flow and letting things happen as they happen.

Two wheels on my wagon ...

But I'm still rolling along. Just.

It has been a terrible few days. Everything had seemed to be rolling along smoothly, if rather more slowly than we'd have liked and then it started to unravel

As of Thursday morning, we were finally in a position to exchange contracts on both the houses. Then we had a call on Thursday afternoon to say that the vendor of the house we were buying with Carl was pulling out.

We'd been forewarned this might happen overnight and we'd already started looking for a rental property as a stop-gap (we simply have to have somewhere in the Kettering area as Carl needs somewhere to live, Jane needs to stay in work for a little while longer and we need an address). Of itself, it was not the end of the world

And then on Friday morning whilst eating breakfast before watching "Safe Return" being lifted out for the survey, the second wheel came loose. The estate agents phoned to say that our buyers wanted a structural engineer to examine a crack in the wall of the house. Why this wasn't raised weeks ago I do not know (actually, I have my suspicions but that's neither here nor there). I doubt there is a genuine issue (the crack, such as it is, is almost certainly due to settlement of the wall under the side window of the French windows we had installed eight years or so ago) but I suspect an issue is going to be made of it

There's every chance we are going to loose the sale on the house and have to start again with the added hassle and expense of having this crack repaired first so that we don't run into the same problem second time around.

The reality is that we cannot keep pushing forward without regard to the risk that we're simply going to over-reach ourselves. It's looking increasingly unlikely that we'll be able to get the house sale though in an acceptable time scale to buy "Safe Return" and to make matter worse if the costs rise much further our budget is going to be looking extremely tight anyway

So sadly we've had to accept that "Safe Return" has gone back on the market. Carol has been really great over things so far and we're not prepared to mess her around for another few weeks unless we are 100% confident of going ahead and the reality is that we cannot be that sure

There's still a chance, maybe even a good chance, that we'll be able to buy "Safe Return" after all but if someone else snaps her up before we have the cash in hand it'll be a case of it wasn't meant to be

All we can do now is wait for the results of the structural engineer's visit and go from there.

Loose nuts :(

Yesterday was the big day for the survey

However, it turns out it may have been a waste of time ...

The other loose nuts are on the wheels of the dream machine

Following on from the vendor of the house we were going to buy pulling out of the deal at the very last moment on Thursday, the buyers of our house then threw a wobbly on Friday, days before exchanging contracts, and have asked for a structural engineer to look at a crack in the wall beneath the French windows. Why this was not brought up weeks ago is, if I'm being charitable, a mystery. It's hard to avoid the thought that it's motivated by the thought that we'll now be so desperate to sell that we'll drop the price. The couple who are buying the house didn't strike me as being like that at all though

We'll just have to wait and see what the outcome of that is. The worst case scenario is that the sale falls through and we have to have repairs carried out before we can re-market the house. That would set us back badly

The one saving grace is that Carol, from whom we're buying Safe Return / Pagan, has been an absolute star and she's given us time to sort things out short term and tabled a deal that will, if necessary, give us another five or six months to sort things out. I hate having to mess her about but all we can do is be totally honest about the situation other people are putting us in and take it from there

The last few days have been a bit of an emotional roller coaster to say the least. Just 72 hours ago everything was looking smooth and all set to be wrapped up within another two or three weeks. Now we're clinging on to the dream by our fingernails.

The big lift

I've left this post in-situ however we did not, in the end, purchase "Safe Return" due to problems with the house sale and purchase which left us with a considerably reduced budget.

Today was the day we'd arranged to have "Safe Return" lifted out ready for the survey tomorrow

It was a bright but bitterly cold start to the day which was much improved by coffee and breakfast at West Wick Yacht Club

Then it was all aboard as Carol expertly motored "Safe Return" out of her berth and round to the slipway

Paul and James were ready and waiting and in no time at all she was on the slip and being pressure washed



The hull was impressively clean with no weed or barnacles to speak of. Much better than Erbas last time she came out. I'll stick with the Cruiser Uno antifoul I think!

One key area to check, as always with twin keel Westerlys, was the state of the keels and keel roots. Happily, there was no sign of any movement at all and the sealant between the keels and the hull is intact and in good order. Plus there's no sign of any rust steaks, often the first indication of keel bolt problems



Carol and I had had a chat and decided not to put Safe Return back in on Monday. She'll stay out now until we relaunch as "Pagan" under our ownership
That relieves me of the necessity of antifouling in the current cold weather which is savage amusement and far from ideal

So she was duly transported down the yard and deposited next to Carol's office.



Toby arrives in the morning to do the insurance survey for us after which we just need to get to the end of the interminable housing saga (of which more another time) to release the funds to complete the purchase

Exciting times ahead

Soon, this will be the ships log of our new vessel. Not quite because we don't actually own her yet!

The details are all in the pages on the sidebar to the right of the main posts.

"Brigantia"

We purchased "Brigantia", an Islander 23, back in 2011

"Brigantia" carried us as far afield as Lowestoft to the North and on our most epic voyage all the way to Chichester on the South Coast. We also began what we now expect to be a lifetime of exploring the nooks and crannies of the Thames Estuary

The three years we sailed "Brigantia" convinced us that coastal sailing was indeed the thing for us after so many years on the inland waterways.

She was a fine little yacht which served us well during our time with her but at 23' she was just too small and we fell in love with and bought "Erbas", a fine example of a Sabre 27 on whim.

"Erbas"

We have never regretted that "rash" decision even though, as it has turned out, we will only have sailed Erbas for two seasons. She, in her turn, has convinced us to take a major leap into the dark and change our whole lifestyle radically.

That lifestyle change began at the beginning of this year when I left my job with BP. It wasn't a very good job, it didn't pay very well and I'd become terminally bored with it but it did provide a steady reliable income. I left to set up on my own as a Marine Electrical Engineer. Despite the problems of commuting backwards and forwards between Kettering and so on, the business has started well and the future looks good.

The next step in the lifestyle change is well in hand and it involves downsizing from the family home to a small terraced house in the same area which will give us a winter base if needed and security for the future. In the process, we'll wipe out the mortgage and release a decent chunk of equity and that in turn paves the way for the purchase of an even larger yacht.

Erbas is a fine vessel with bags of character and excellent accommodation as a holiday cruising yacht but as a semi-liveaboard (and just how much time we'll spend on board and how much back at the house remains to be seen but we're almost certain to be aboard a lot more than we're not) she's once again too small for our needs.

When this post was first written, we were in the process of purchasing a Westerly Vulcan 34. Unfortunately, delays and issues with the housing transactions meant we had to pull out of that purchase. This post has been edited to reflect those subsequent events.

That final step, you'll have surely guessed, is for Jane too to give up her full time job at Morrisons just outide of Kettering and move on board. Depending on my income levels and her boredom level, she may well look for some part time and/or temporary work nearby once she's down there

We've been discussing our plans a lot, of course, and 2016 is likely to be focussed on getting Pagan how we want her and in learning our way around our new yacht. There's bound to be all sorts of things we want to change, modify, update or just plain tweak to our liking provided there's enough pennies in the piggy bank.

The major focus for Jane is that she is very keen to become at least a "competent crew" (although whether we bother with the formal qualifications is another matter - it costs money to do the courses and money is going to be a strictly rationed commodity!). That is to say that she wants to be able to, and to feel confident to, tackle the basics of steering the boat, keeping a watch, sail handling, coming alongside / picking up a buoy / anchoring and critically what to do in an emergency.

I feel that whilst my theoretical knowledge is pretty up there, my practical skills are lagging behind. I'm happy under motor but I'm really not sure how well or how badly I'm actually handling the boat under sail. We get there OK but I just don't have a benchmark to measure how we're doing against. I can't help wondering if we could be getting there quicker! And then there's manoeuvring under sail which is something I've largely avoided and would like to brush up my skills at doing.

So we're not currently planning any major adventures to far flung places next year, it'll be a case of as much pottering around the Thames Estuary as we can fit in around working and refitting Pagan to suit our needs and long term plans.

By the start of the season in 2017, we hope that we'll be in a good enough financial position for Jane to give up the full time job and move down on board for the season. We're hoping then we can start getting some miles under the keels and develop our skills and confidence to the point where we're ready for the big adventure.

And that big adventure will be to sail around the British Isles in 2018 or 2019.

It will mean taking six months off work and that means we'll need a fairly hefty wedge in the bank to cover the expenses of the cruise and our living expenses over the following winter as, of course, while we're away I won't be earning any money and it will take a while to build things back up again.

We want to embark on that adventure before too many years have passed and before age and health potentially start to limit our options - neither of us is 100% fit now in our mid-50s and we both have physical health problems which, whilst relatively minor now, will inevitably get worse as we get older.

Our tentative plan is to set off from Fambridge in mid-April, weather permitting, and bash up the East Coast to the Scottish Border as quickly as possible. The idea being that we won't hang about in waters that are within easy range of subsequent cruises of four to six weeks duration (see below). Then we'll work our way up the East Coast of Scotland aiming for the Orkneys by sometime in May.

From there, we'll hop across the wide open waters of the ocean to Fair Isle to visit my cousin Ruth and her family for a few days and thence onwards to Shetland to visit my her brother Mark and his family. If the weather gods don't interfere, we'll spend a week or two in Shetland before making our way back to Orkney for a further week or so.

There are quite a few historic sites I really want to visit on Orkney. The islands, now so much on the periphery of British life, were once right at the heart of pre-Roman Celtic culture (a subject very much dear to my heart).

We'll then round the top of Scotland to the Western Isles where we'll need to make a decision depending on how long the journey has taken us. Ideally, we'll spend a month or so around Western Scotland before heading down the West Coast, round Lands End and thence along the South Coast and back to the Thames Estuary.

The South Coast leg will once again be knocked off as quickly as possible as our future plans will see us return to those waters on subsequent shorter cruises.

However, if circumstances have led to our arriving later than planned in the Western Isles, we'll keep in mind the option of heading back across through the Caledonian Canal, a waterway we'd love to revisit in any case, and a quick slog down the East Coast to get home. Whether we'd be able to complete the circuit another year we simply can't predict but if we don't it doesn't really matter as long as we enjoy our summer off. There's no prizes for sailing the whole way round and we'd rather enjoy the half of the trip than flog ourselves to get all the way round in one go

After that major expedition, we hope our lives will settle into a pattern of many years of taking a month to six weeks off each summer to cruise further afield than is possible in the two week holidays that are the dictat of a normal working life.

We'd love to visit the Channel Islands and the Scillies, Ireland is very much on the radar (Jane is especially keen on that idea) and we haven't given up on Europe either despite our less than satisfactory Cruise to Furrin Parts earlier this year.

As the title says, exciting times ahead!