Giles and Paula's Great Retirement Adventure

[Giles]

Being moored next to Lentantia for a few days has given me a bad dose of mooring-warp envy. So I made our own.....

Oh, and on that note, Graeme has invited himself for G&T's....

[louisbosco]

damn the leather bits look fineeee

[Giles]

I love how small this world is, I found out this morning that Graeme (skipper of Lethantia) and @Simon were best friends at junior school. Started in the marine industry at the same time......

[sabergirl]

That’s amazing, Giles. If you were going to bump into a multimillion dollar yacht, seems like you chose the right one!

[Giles]

Finding the Augmented Reality very useful.....

[goosehd]

@Giles That’s pretty cool and would be fantastic for night navigation.

[Giles]

100%.....

[Giles]

@Madame-Buttonfly and I took SAKURA out on our own for the first the today. Didn't really go anywhere, just wanted to prove to ourselves we could do it

[Giles]

And goodbye to Lethantia, her next stop is Guernsey for fuel (just the 16,000 litres) and then up to Bergen...

[goosehd]

@Giles 16000 litres…ouch

…and congratulations on the solo sailing you two!!

[Giles]

Does 16 tonnes sound better?

[goosehd]

Either way that’s a lot of money…I’d be thankful for the sails.

[Giles]

They very rarely just sail. It's motor sailing for them the majority of the time. If the owner is onboard, they'll do it a bit for fun, but usually, it's 3 or 4 sails and the engine.....

[goosehd]

@Giles So does the Captain and Stew just go from port to port and pick up the owners upon request. Not a bad life when you get to spend your life at sea, drive someone else's boat, and somebody else foots the bill for the essentials...

I am doing life completely wrong if that's the case.

[Giles]

The boat has a crew of 6 full-time (Cap, cook, stew mate, engineer and deckhand) and one extra deckhand for long passages. We got up to watch them leave at 06:00 this morning, and all 7 were busy. The Captain and the owner decide what and where they will do things, and then the boat goes there, picks him and his family up and does stuff. The boat's home port is Malaga, which is where Graeme lives, he has worked for the owner for 13 years and they have an understanding, if Graeme is away from home for too long he'll find something else to do, the owner does not want to lose Graeme, so to a great extent Graeme calls the shots. It seems to be a great symbiotic relationship. We met all the crew and they were an insanely happy and competent bunch. We spent the "crash evening" with Victor the engineer and he reported back that we were OK, we could not get rid of them after that.....We'd have loved to have looked around Lethantia, but that was never going to happen, it was a step too far into someone else's personal realm.....

[ROman]

@Giles To me after the bump evening and everything worked out, its always impromptu situations that lead to unexpected friendships, situations that will always be remembered.

[goosehd]

@Giles Random question: Do you have a fire suppression system on your boat?

Reason I ask is that an article is currently on the BBC about a cruise ship catching on fire and 3 Britons are missing, which made me wonder what your regulations say about Fire safety and how your boat was built regarding them.

Just curious…

[Giles]

No regs for pleasure boats, if we had paying guests, it would be a different matter.

We have a fire suppressant system in the engine room. Currently no fire extinguishers elsewhere, that will be rectified.

[Giles]

We're leaving Brest for the UK this morning.....

[tody]

Have a safe journey!