Preparing for the voyage

At the moment it feels like a million miles away. Sitting in an office in Newcastle doing a full time job whilst spending every evening writing lists of jobs that still need doing and every weekend refitting the boat and preparing her for the voyage ahead.

When we decided that sailing half way round the world was what we really wanted to do I foolishly had a romantic notion of walking out of the front door, stepping aboard and slipping the mooring lines would all happen very easily.

How wrong I was! The dream quickly became a logistical nightmare far before we even set foot on our new boat.

The first thing we had to do was make sure it was a feasible task, speaking to my work to arrange a secondment to Australia, and then going back to ask for 15 months of unpaid leave before I began was just the start of it, we then had to look into the best timings for the route we want to take in order get the right weather and make sure this would fit with our planned departure dates which also had to fit around Kate’s teacher training degree.

It was like one huge jigsaw puzzle where everything needed to fit together even before we could start the biggest task of getting a boat.

The search for the right boat occupied 6 months of my time, with regular trips down to Southampton and other far flung places viewing and test sailing potential boats to fit the list of requirements we already had.

Once we had found what we believe is the right boat for us, we then faced a 3 month commute to and from Southampton to get her ready to sail back to Fleetwood in the North West where she would be based for the refit. It was, however, the best feeling in the world to slip lines in Southampton and set off to bring her back ‘home’.

On day 5 of the trip as we approached Lands End it was so tempting to hang a left and head south, but we knew neither us nor the boat was ready, so we begrudgingly swung her nose north and headed into the colder weather.

Therein followed 15 months of boat refits. Every task has been done either by the two of us, or with expert advice, but no task has been outsourced to someone else to do for us.

We need to know the boat inside out from top to bottom to make sure we knew how everything worked and that we can fix it en-route if we needed to. It's quite amazing how much there is to do, from electrics to woodwork, plumbing to engine maintenance and a thousand other jobs in between.

Sitting in Newcastle, the pull of the ocean and the warmth of tropical island anchorages seems so far away still, but the boat is nearly ready, we are nearly ready, and with only 5 weeks to go until we realise the dream and cast off the excitement is most definitely building.

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