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First yacht seen.

The first one was a Jeanneau 12.5m Voyager based in Elba. Flights booked, we flew out to Pisa, grabbed a hire car and a room for the night before setting off for Elba the following morning. Having crossed over to the Island by ferry we had time on our hands to do a bit of site-seeing. Beautiful island. Pity I couldn’t say the same about the yacht. The asking price was £40 000 and having spent a few hours going over it we were both of the opinion that it wasn’t worth anything near this price. A lot of work needed to be done to it to bring it anywhere near good condition. This said, I put an offer of £25 000 in. This was rejected with a new asking price of £35 000. I think I then increased my offer to £27 000 but this was not accepted, the sellers saying that they would not go below the second asking price. On to the next one then. (Months later this same yacht was re-advertised at an asking price of £25 000 and I believe it went for less than this).  It wasn’t for us!

As you can see, from the outside it doesn't look too bad! However, once you stepped inside it was a mess. Leaks everywhere (hence the bowls) and equipment just dumped in every room. Not the best way to promote the sale.

The circumnavigation.

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My journey started in June 2018 when I left Preveza, Greece, in my Bavaria37C, a monohull bound for Gibraltar. I had decided to cross the Atlantic with the ARC and had declared that Gibraltar would be my stepping point in order to prepare the boat for this passage. I had ordered a Hydrovane self steering mechanism to complement my autopilot. I also ordered a water maker as I thought that with four crew on board and only holding 300 litres of water, I would need to make some during the trip. The person I had asked to carry out this work was, let’s say, rather slow, cut corners and, to be honest, never finished the work. An ongoing project between Gibraltar and Cape Verde. From Cape Verde we sailed with the ARC to St. Lucia. The boat was left on the hard in St. Lucia over the winter of 2018 before I sailed her back to Greece in 2019. At that point I knew I wanted to go further but needed to think about the type of boat required to sail round the world. At this point I decided that a catamaran would be the best type of boat for this passage so sold my Bavaria and bought a Lagoon 380 S2. The boat was based in St Martin so it was sailed from there down to Trinidad in May / June 2022. It was left there for quite a bit of work to be carried out before setting off again in January / February 2023. Leaving Trinidad to head through the Panama Canal across the Pacific I left my last crew member in Bora Bora. From there I sailed solo up to Sri Lanka where the boat was left once more over winter. In January 2024 I will return to Sri Lanka to complete the last leg of the circumnavigation, heading up the Red Sea, through the Suez Canal and back into the Mediterranean. All of the daily blogs have been written and placed on my website.

The legs

Greece to St. Lucia via Gibraltar, Gran Canaria and Cape Verde.

St Martin to Trinidad.

Trinidad to Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka to Greece.

Change of Boats

In order to complete the circumnavigation I had decided that a 'larger' boat was needed. Not necessarily in length but wider, a catamaran. Also my old boat only had one heads (toilet) and a second was required. So, from a monohull, a Bavaria 37 Cruiser a Lagoon 380 S2 was bought.

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