About us and the boat

About us and the boat:

We were lucky enough to retire early at the start of 2013 so we could head off and "live the dream" on board our Nordhavn 47 Trawler Yacht. The idea is to see some of the planet, at a slow 6 - 7 knots pace. There are no fixed goals or timings, we just had a plan to visit Scotland and then probably the Baltic before heading south.

The idea is to visit the nicer areas in these latitudes before heading south for warmer weather. If we like somewhere, we will stay for a while. If not, we will just move on. So, for the people who love forward planning and targets, this might seem a little relaxed!

If anyone else is contemplating a trawler yacht life, maybe our experiences will be enough to make you think again, or maybe do it sooner then you intended!

The boat is called Rockland and she is built for long distance cruising and a comfortable life on board too. If you want to see more about trawler yachts and the Nordhavn 47 in particular, there is a link to the manufacturers website in our "useful stuff" section. For the technically minded, there is a little info and pictures of the boat and equipment in the same section

Regards

Richard and June

Monday, 6 May 2013


St Peter Port (Guernsey)  to Falmouth

You can have too much of a good thing you know. Guernsey life probably qualifies as a good thing and so to bring a little reality back, we decided to head off to Falmouth as the forecast was for a nice settled weather window before a big Atlantic depression arrives to muck everything up again. The trip takes 18-20 hours and it is best to leave St Peter Port and round the northern Guernsey coast in daylight – lots of rocks and a plethora of pot markers to avoid. It is also good to arrive in Falmouth in daylight as it too is plagued by pot markers around the entrance and the floats which the fishermen use are way too small and the wrong material to be picked up on the radar. Sometimes even huge commercial grade Furuno radars get defeated!

So, we headed off just after lunch (see, still civilised!) and left the town of St Peter Port which was in the clutches of another bunch of cruise liner passengers. This time from the Black Watch, decidedly down market in comparison to the earlier P&O invaders.

Leaving the berth and threading through the moorings in the harbour. We hoped not to bother this guy at all:






The Black Watch, anchored off the harbour, is as old and tatty as some of her passengers were (sorry, sounds very snobbish and unkind, I know. No grounds to be like that as we live on a boat and have only worn casual clothes since stopping work ….) :





The trip was uneventful. I will try to make it sound more exciting for everyone though. So, if you are a budding sailing type the sea state was as forecast – moderate westerly swell from the earlier winds. The waves were 5 to 6 foot high but not enough to bother 40 tons of Nordhavn and it was lovely to be able to keep the pilot house door open until sunset.  Of course, bobbing through this cost a bit of speed but we are not into speed anyway! Crossing the main shipping area was amazingly easy this time. Lots of big boys about but only 2 course alterations needed to thread through both the eastbound and Westbound wolf packs. Here is the “pack” hunting us down as seen on the PC monitor thanks to AIS:





Somehow the relative scales don’t work, the big red blob is our little Tupperware boat. The green triangles are 200 metre plus monsters going way faster than us. Perhaps we should change the icons on the screen to look more scary….

Overnight the sea calmed right down and the promised fog didn’t materialise so it was a gentle albeit slow crossing. Gentle was good – allows the off watch person to fall asleep more quickly after their “watch”. Apparently, the Captain showed no desire to wake up for his next stint at the helm. Crew viewed this as out of order. Captain viewed it as showing total faith in the crew. You choose…
The trip was slow because we had to push two full eastbound tides and only got advantage from one – a penalty of making sure we left after half-tide in daylight and arrived in daylight too. However, a good move as the Falmouth fishermen seem to think that empty clear plastic 2 litre milk bottles make a good pot marker. Visibility in a slightly bumpy sea – almost zero. OK, rant over.

Arriving in the Fal, the sun decided to hide away. Despite the bank holiday weekend there were plenty of moorings / anchorage spots upstream and we happily tucked onto a mid-river pontoon just above the Smugglers Cottage / King Harry Ferry after 20 hours underway.  The view from our home for the night:





Now for the technically minded people:

We were also slow because we had added about 2.2 tons of diesel in Guernsey. Because the crew is paranoid about running out of water we also dragged about 250 gallons of the special Channel Island brew back to the UK. The extra weight in total knocked about 0.4 knots off our speed at our normal 1450rpm cruise. For real trainspotting, see the post in the useful stuff section about hull speed and engine loading – how we try to optimise fuel burn. For sad cases like the captain it is an interesting science and if you were mid ocean in some rough stuff and getting short of fuel, a critical one too. Actually, with ever increasing diesel costs it is important all the time!

For most of the trip, the stabilisers were centred. They were only used when the crew was busy preparing dinner just in case. Typically in moderate seas they will knock about 0.3 knots off our speed.  0.3 knots for such a comfortable ride; we forgive them. In the gentle stuff we had for the crossing barely 0.1 of a knot was lost.

There is some maintenance to report too. Nothing too exciting though so don’t expect stories of mid channel top end overhauls. On one of the engineroom checks (Capt goes down there every couple of hours to check all is well and take key component temperatures with an infa-red heat gun) he noticed a drip of coolant from a fitting on the gearbox oil cooler. It got tightened up and rechecked OK. See, not that exciting really – just the usual problem with any joint that get lots of heat expansion and contraction cycles over time. Sorry (actually very glad) that we couldn’t offer anything more dramatic.



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