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

Wednesday, 19 June 2013

Otter Ferry / Inverary / Portavadie

You know how we said that a proper place is one where you have to go shopping by dinghy? (Another reason not to have a trolley shopper of course, it might puncture the tubes). Well, Otter Ferry didn’t let us go shopping as there wasn’t one. It did let us take the rubbish ashore that way though so we guess that counts too.

An atmospheric trip up to the top of Loch Fyne followed. Overcast, “moody” but it fitted so well to the dramatic scenery around us.

This is Minard castle in the misty weather:




Opposite, was June’s ancestral seat.  No, not that seat. The ruined Castle Lachlan. Although her surname was a very up market “McLachlan” before she became a very low rent “Green”, the captain still struggles to understand how someone ½ Dutch, ¼ English and only ¼ Scottish can be a Clan member though. Might be the admission rules are “anyone prepared to pay dues to the Chieftain”?

They seemed to be in the process of shoring up the remains of June’s seat. It needed a lot of scaffolding. (No comments thank you John.)




Frankly it looks more like a hideous East German communist built block of flats than a castle right now. The Captain’s ancestral seat (a small bungalow in Norfolk with no scaffolding, only pebble dash) seems quite acceptable in comparison.

Just to prove there is some industry left in the area, at the beautifully named village of Furnace:




We then saw the first Seal of the trip – briefly though as he clearly didn’t like the look of us bearing down on him at a stately 6 knots. 


The anchorage off Inverary proved pretty much impossible, now the area is full of marker buoys for the fish farms and a few local moorings. OK, if they didn’t want us, we were not going to visit them (we’d been by car many years ago and so didn’t feel cheated). Still a nice looking place though:





Then, the decision was to head south to Portavadie for the night. More dramatic “Loch in the dreich” vistas for us to enjoy:

 


By the way, dreich is one of the first words we learned when we moved to Scotland. Probably because it was typical winter weather and the topic of much discussion with the locals. Dreich = a combination of overcast, dull, drizzly, cold, misty, miserable. Apparently at least 4 of these adjectives have to apply before the weather is truly dreich. It was.


 The other must learn things were “carry out” for a “take away” and “stay” for “live”. Most important of all was learning about “80 shilling” instead of “bitter” of course as the crew worked for Scottish and Newcastle Brewery. Happy days!!!
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