Part 2 of Doug and Carol’s Caribbean Adventure can be found below.

We are working hard still

I’m writing down these notes in the hope that the story of our first year of sailing from
the Dee Sailing Club proves potentially interesting for others treading the same path
(or water).

PART 1 – Getting started

We had previously owned a Seamaster 19 cruiser with a dreaded swing-keel. This
was sailed from the immensely expensive Liverpool Marina over a period of about 5
years. Coping with that massively powerful and fast tide was always a battle. That
and the industrial panorama from the river eventually wore us down. When our
beautiful Honda 8 outboard was ‘nicked’ by the locals last October enough was
enough. We joined DSC, … Continue Reading

Brief History lesson: (for those who don’t know me)I haven’t sailed in the Dart fleet for about 4 years concentrating on domesticity.

Well, after doing those household chores of laying laminate flooring I looked at the clocks and thought, “Its Saturday night, the Nationals are on, Dee is 1hr 30 mins away, What the hell am I doing at home”

Following the epiphany I ran upstairs grabbed some kit and legged it across the A50, avoided the traffic on the M6 and arrived at 8pm to see Lloydy in the car park, sniffing gelcoat or whatever he does whilst lurking around boats.

Lloydy:
Some … Continue Reading

The alarm goes off at 04:30, up for a quick shower, breakfast, call the family and load the car. Back to my days with the Royal Fleet Auxiliary heading off on yet another trip, far too conscientious to be late. With everyone breakfasted and the car loaded with luggage, like a well oiled machine, we set off for Liverpool Airport.

We duly met up with Jon & Jaks, our companions for the forthcoming trip, after signing in. The flight to Barcelona was happily uneventful. Approached by a taxi driver to take us to our destination, he took us away from the … Continue Reading

We had six boats on the cruise to Flint on Sunday despite the miserable weather. The prize for the most determined sailors has to go to Jonathan Jenkins and crew – who actually made it all the way to Flint (and back) despite the relative lack of wind… although they were forced to resort to motoring for some of the outward trip!

The rest of us ran out of time as the winds were very light on the outward trip, but we did make it to Wales and picked up a … Continue Reading