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Things to do in the meantime.

I met up with my son in January 2013 on a trip to White Hart Lane to see Spurs play, a team we both support, when discussion turned to golf and sailing. It transpired that he and a group of his friends were to play at Celtic Manor in February days before my course started in Gibraltar. Any spare places for two others? Yes, so down to Wales we went with golf clubs and another golfing colleague. It was bitterly cold, the course was rock solid, the golf wasn’t too hot but the craic in the evening followed by the odd vino or three was excellent. Couldn’t face a full English breakfast, can’t imagine why, but at our allotted time we were bussed down to the 2010 course to play our final round. Needless to say that the scoring wasn’t too good but the three of us ended up with an award for our troubles. My son got the longest drive on the Montgomerie course, Graham got runner up in the stableford competition and I got the longest drive (and parred the 18th) on the 2010 course. The following day it was off to Gibraltar to begin the sailing course, but before that my son and I drove up to Sierra Nevada for a day’s snow-boarding. Fantastic snow conditions, excellent weather and a great day was had before returning to Gibraltar. We met up with Peter from Rock Sailing School that evening just so that I had an idea of where to go the following day for the start of the course. A nice Italian meal, a good bottle of chianti and some beers before settling down for the night then off, bright and breezy to begin the course on the Monday.

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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