A Rough Plan for 2024 - 49° 38' 53" N 01° 37' 12" E

By Kate and Sean -

 


We have a lot of people asking:

Where will you go first? 
Where will you be in [insert month here]? 
Can I come to Bora Bora? 

So here is a very high-level, very preliminary plan for 2024. Please note this is subject to change due to weather, whim, Kate's visa (Sean has Irish- and thus EU citizenship), boat maintenance and any other multitude of reasons.  But here goes...

March 2024
Chinook is scheduled for delivery on 11 March 2024. We have a week of training and we plan to spend the remainder of the month based in Cherbourg, doing small sails around the area.  If we feel adventurous and have the weather window, this may include The Channel Islands.

April - June 2024
A circumnavigation of The UK and Ireland.  At this stage we are not even sure which direction it will be.  We want to spend a few months learning the systems and testing the boat while we are still relatively close to the factory.  It also gets Kate out of the Schengen Zone for visa purposes!

Mid-July 2024
Back to Cherbourg for the three month warranty check on the boat - just like you would with a new house or car. If all is well, we will spend about a week there.

Late July - Early October 2024
We plan to head north along the French, Belgium, Dutch and German coasts to the Kiel Canal in Germany.  Once through the canal, we will turn left and explore eastern Denmark and the Western Archipelago of Sweden. Yes, we will be mooring up against rocks! We have a wedding near Toulouse in mid-September so we will find a handy marina (perhaps in Norway) to leave the boat and fly down for that.  We will then zip the 350nm across the North Sea to Inverness where we will leave the boat while we fly back to Australia for Sam and Em's wedding. 

Late October - December 2024
We will transit the Caledonian Canal across Scotland (sailing Loch Ness, how cool!) then find a nice comfy marina/marinas for the winter months.  This may be Oban, Dublin, Cork, Plymouth... or a combination of any and all.  We need to be out of the Schengen as Kate will have run up her Schengen time.

...and 2025?

Wow - that's stretching things!  2025 will likely be summer in The Baltic Sea - Sweden, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Åland.  Then warmer climes will be calling so south and an Atlantic crossing to The Caribbean.

If you are planning a visit, let us know rough dates. We have a few visitors locked in already, particularly during the summer so let us know if you are planning to come. And as you know, we will give you a time or a place, but not both!!

Chinook will be within the boundries of this map during 2024


Comments

  1. Adrian FooteFebruary 5, 2024 at 10:29 AM

    What an awesome trip you have planned. I look forward to hearing about your adventures!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kate and SeanFebruary 6, 2024 at 3:12 AM

      We'll be picking your brains on all the cool things you did!

      Delete
  2. AnonymousFebruary 29, 2024 at 12:18 PM

    Hi Sean and Kate its the Harley`s we love your Rough plan for 2024 can`t wait to see you guys next Good luck for the splash date !!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Check out our most popular posts!

Moving Aboard - 49° 38' 27" N 01° 37' 00" E

By Kate and Sean -
Image
Wow, that was a big week.  We are exhausted. ... and smitten! Monday was a paperwork day, but aboard Chinook.  We went over the contract, item by item, to ensure that everything the contract stated would be delivered.  There were a few things missing or incomplete (mixups in ordering, vendor delivery timing issues) but they were noted with written assurances that they would be delivered, changed out or corrected.  This all needed to be clearly stated before we transfer the lion's share of the purchase amount to Garcia. Signing and double-checking the contract Anything that wasn't in place, was incomplete or not working properly would be dealt with by the warranty team.   There was no refuting that they had delivered A boat. We had no idea how she sailed and there was no way that a single day of inspection would allow anyone to check every bit of the more-than-5000-person-hours of labour that went into this sleek looking vessel. The "Grin and Grab" p
Read more

Leaving Chinook and heading back to Canada - 49° 38' 27" N 01° 37' 00" E

By Kate and Sean -
Image
 Yep, you read correctly.  Our plans have changed, as plans often do and our 2024 is looking somewhat different from what we wrote in a previous post - A Rough Plan for 2024 .  Chinook will be left safe and sound at Port Chantereyne Marina - with her Garcia friends! We still plan to head to the UK and Ireland after Easter and will spend until mid-June cruising around, exploring the area and putting Chinook through her paces.  Our plan is to sail to Alderney, just off the coast of Normandy, on Easter Monday or Tuesday.  It is a short hop but has some major tides that can run up to 10kn so we need to time our departure well.  We bought the "Aurigny' (Alderney to the English-speakers) courtesy flag from the local chandlers here in Cherbourg We will then cross the English Channel to Portsmouth and work our way west along the coast of England to Wales and Scotland before heading south along the eastern Irish coast.  We need to be back in Cherbourg by mid-June for the 3-month warran
Read more

Garcia Boatyard - 49° 38' 48" N 01 35' 47" E

By -
Image
When we rocked up to the Garcia office for our Monday morning meeting, we couldn't help but notice that a mast-less Exploration 45 was parked outside the shed door where we had previously seen our hull parked.  Could this be o-u-r boat? Nice boat.  Could it be ours??? Marie, our project manager, confirmed that it was our boat!  Although we had come to the yard to put the Boat Show goodies that we had acquired into Garcia-provided storage, we were meeting with Christophe, the after-sales guy to go over spare parts and after-delivery emergency equipment that we were putting on our order.  We would not be getting a look ON BOARD this marvellous aluminium creature.  We would just be admiring through the meeting room window.  Our boat tour was tomorrow. The next day, we had mistakenly thought that the meeting was at 11 am, rather than the scheduled 10 am.  at 10:15 we received a text message from a puzzled Marie.  "Are you coming for the meeting?  Don't you want to
Read more