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Second yacht seen.

Valencia in December. Again another Jeanneau 12.5m Voyager, berthed in the recently built marina. This time the asking price was slightly higher but the condition of the boat was considerably better than the last one viewed. Having looked through all of the documentation, taken many photos, the agent and I retired to the marina café to discuss many things and some of them included the boat. I had flown over by myself so a decision wasn’t going to be made on the spot. Having booked the hire car for a couple of days I thought I would kill two birds with the proverbial stone and drove down to Denia, where an old school colleague ran a bar. Having got the address from his sister I found his place in Denia after an hour or so searching. Going up to the door of the bar I read…. ‘Bar shut until 12th December, back in the UK visiting family’. Just my luck! I drove to the nearest supermarket, bought some provisions and returned to Valencia airport. I rebooked my flight and settled down for the night with a baguette, cheese and hams and a few beers. Back in the UK offers and counter offers were made on the boat but we could not agree on a sale price, so another one went by.

A much better presented yacht. Very clean interior, including the engine that appeared to have been cleaned by hand! Yes, there were several items that needed addressing, the bimini spray hood had seen better days, as had some of the teak decking, but these could easily be put right. Unfortunately the owner was not prepared to reduce his price so it was off to see another one.

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.

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St Martin to Trinidad.

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Trinidad to Sri Lanka.

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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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