Race 3 - 2021 Spring Series

16 May 2021 Upnor, Kent, UK

A quiet, sporty and wet race this week. It was going well right from the start, we had plenty of beer as we boarded Astral with both Andy and I bringing beer, in addition to a big crate of Stella already on board. We slipped the berth for the 9am lock and were joined with Elite Sailing’s Spirit and Lightning. Lock out took a little while and wit... Read more

Race 2 - 2021 Spring Series

09 May 2021 Upnor, Kent, UK

With the first race of the shortened 2021 Keelboat Spring Series abandoned due to lack of wind, this was the first real race. A 10am start with five boats, fewer than usual with many still on the hard due to COVID mixing things up. There were five boats racing, two in class 3 ‘white sails’ and three in IRC, class 1. With so few boats a start fro... Read more

Dent Reckoning

23 May 2020 Marylebone, London, UK

The dents are gone! I don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner… There have been two dents on the car that have been driving (hah!) me crazy for months now, one was on the rear quarter which has obviously been caused by somebody opening their door, not very big but it stood out when I was washing the car or whatever. The other was much more severe ... Read more

Cocked Hat

22 May 2020 Upnor, Kent, UK

Wednesday’s Day Skipper lesson was great. The Zoom format continues to work very well and I’m enjoying being able to be in my own space and not have to worry about other people. We covered some interesting topics, how to calculate bearing, position fixing, and compass variation and deviation, which was a new concept to me. We also covered tides ... Read more

Holm Point

19 May 2020 Upnor, Kent, UK

It’s hot. It’s super hot, the Audi said it was 30 Celsius in the car at lunch time and I believe it. The weather is absolutely gorgeous and I almost envy those who are on furlough and able to make the most of being away from work. Aside from working I made a few small tweaks to the CSS on the blog, I added a footer for Github/Jekyll and adjusted... Read more

Strong Holm

18 May 2020 Upnor, Kent, UK

Blimey, it’s been a busy day since the last post! Last night was a lot of fun, I watched Iron Pier run a meet the brewer and can launch via their Facebook page. It was great, there were about 30 people on the live feed and the two brewers explained everything to do with their backgrounds to the canning process and their future goals. You can wat... Read more

Fitzroy Bay

17 May 2020 Upnor, Kent, UK

This weekend couldn’t have come sooner, it’s been a long week, productive, but long. Yesterday I spent most of the day drafting out Leg 8 of the Train To Turkey blog post. It’s coming along but it still seems to take me absolutely ages to get it all together. I’ve got a bit of a process now which is 1. Sort through pictures, edit and prepare 2. ... Read more

Medway Regatta 2019

01 Jul 2019

The Medway Regatta is a big weekend of racing for all classes of keelboat. There are races for Sonatas, Squibs, Dragons, Cruisers and even Thames Barges! The past few years I’ve focused my time underwater rather than on the water but not too many years back I used to spend time sailing dinghies on the Medway in the cadet class. This year I had t... Read more