... try and find us

Tuesday 15 September - We expected a bouncy time across the Channel with an upwind beat Despite some rather nasty weather developing off Iceland, we determined that we had the weather window to dodge the worst of it and head across the Channel and the Bay of Biscay towards Spain. The Bay of Biscay has a rather notorious reputation.  The great swells rolling in from the Atlantic encounter the continental shelf, where with depths suddenly rise from 4,500 metres to just 40 metres.  This can cause the seas to become very steep and very big indeed.   Add to that the violent winter storms for which the North Atlantic is famous and it's not hard to understand why the bay has such a reputation. Wednesday 16 September - The conditions would improve in The Bay of Biscay with the nasty weather behind and in front of us The forecast showed the wind was favourable and the seas, although big, would be oceans swells with long periods and would not cause us too many issu...

We find ourselves in a familiar location ... with a purpose Plymouth really is a lovely place.  We have friends nearby and we know our way into the harbour. In fact, we are SO familiar we even took the shortcut in past Drake's Island! We could have gone around the island, but The Bridge only looks narrow and shallow on the chart. We know otherwise!  But why are we here again? Because we have a few things to do. We're certified! Get our mail - Life aboard means that when we do need a physical piece of paper, certificate or document it is challenging to tell the postman where to bring it.  Most marinas that we plan to go will not accept a piece of mail unless Chinook is in residence there.  We don't want to sit anywhere just waiting for a piece of mail.  Luckily, our friend and fellow yachtie, Pete Goss, lives very close to Plymouth and has offered to receive mail and hold it for us should we ever need. He captured and forwarded our Certificatio...

The old and the new - apartments now line the old docks in Eastern Docklands of Amsterdam After a magical sail down from Enkhuizen, and timing the opening of the bridge to perfection (okay, that was just insanely good luck!), we pulled into the marina in Amsterdam in the late afternoon. This left us plenty of time to head out for a wander, followed by a couple of beers and dinner at a canal-side café.  A pretty perfect way to arrive in Amsterdam! The weather was windy and very wet so we hunkered down and caught up on all sorts of housework, boat jobs, filled out immigration paperwork, administration of life and cooked up a big pot of chili to freeze for our upcoming passages. This cruising life is not all champagne and sunsets! We rode our bikes to check out of the EU at Marechausse and received some very welcome news from the from the very friendly officers.  As Sean is an EU citizen, Kate is able to stay in the Schengen Zone with him as long as we travel together a...