EBAY TO RODNEY BAY
We were hooked as
we cruised around
La Rochelle
saving money in marinas. We had a tight
budget so this was a major factor when
we related it to our ongoing adventures.
I’d put together a spreadsheet
estimating how much money we’d need
to survive, and this proved accurate in
some ways but not in others. Food and
fuel were much less than anticipated but
the lack of anchorages made us use
expensive marinas more than we liked.
Laundry costs where a shock as I hadn’t
even taken them into account but we kept
to our budget without having to resort to
rations. Catching fish, diving for spider
crab and gathering shellfish from the
beaches, along with foraged fennel and
wild rocket from the hedgerows helped.
ARC dream is born
By mid-August we were well and truly
hooked as we cruised around La Rochelle
and the Ile D’Oleron, but it was time to
start heading back, saying goodbye to the
friends we’d made en route, many of whom
were heading for the Med or beyond.
We made much slower progress
heading north as poor weather impeded
our sailing. By the time we reached
Loctudy we were making new friends
- cruisers who had been to the Med or
returning via the Azores from the
Caribbean heading back to England.
We spent many nights interrogating
them over a glass or two of wine, wanting
to know what it was like, what extra
equipment they’d installed, and what
hadn’t they installed that they wished they
had. We compared our yacht with others
and to our surprise everyone commented
that Twenty Twenty was solid and perfectly
capable of an ocean crossing.
Colin and Gill aboard Resolute of
Thames told us how their three-year
adventure around the Caribbean began
as part of the ARC to sail the Atlantic. We
told of Jan’s worry of a big ocean crossing
and Gill admitted she’d been the same but
with plenty of ARC support, training and
expert advice it was so easy. By the time
we sailed into Portland in late October, all
our lists had been ripped up and a new
one made... and now we had a deadline:
everything had to be done by May 2017.Prepare for liveaboard life
We were unable to work on the boat over
the winter because we had to get our
house in order, ready for renting. Sorting
out 35 years of accumulated belongings
proved more difficult than we’d ever
imagined. Even now I think it is the most
difficult thing we have ever had to do. At
the beginning of April we handed the keys
over to our new tenant – it was the
strangest feeling. Our world had suddenly
come to a standstill. No jobs, no house,
nothing but a long list of work to be done
on Twenty Twenty and little time to get it
done. So off we set towards our new
home and an exciting future ahead.
Now living aboard removed the wasted
hours travelling to and fro between home
and the boat each weekend, so we could
be up early and not finish until darkness.
Our first job was to find a fabricator to doPlenty to smile
about: even
scrubbing the decks
is not such a bad
job when the sun is
shiningMast steps were a must-have for Pete ➜