Hosting Friends and Researching the Dream

Blue Velvet was back in the water and ready just in time to take one of my friends and his son sailing in the Solent for the weekend.  We had arranged this weekend months ago assuming that summer would have arrived by June and that it would be gentle conditions.  It was their first time sailing and they did brilliantly despite the wind getting up to 25 knots on the Saturday.  Not much sunshine unfortunately but it was reassuring that after a good blast tacking into a 25 knot wind everything worked perfectly.  Despite the iffy weather we still managed to successfully cook a BBQ dinner with a cunning Cobb BBQ Nicky was given for her Birthday by her Father.  The charcoal is all enclosed so the outside is cold and therefore the  BBQ is safe to place on the deck without risk of damage.  I'm hoping it will come in very handy for searing tuna steaks as we cross oceans; I might have to get a bit better at fishing first though!

Overnight it rained heavily and Nicky found a small leak where the wires from the mast go through the deck; that, I hope, is now sealed.  Not bad considering how much the fittings there have been disturbed and the extra wires fed through.

Yarmouth, Isle of Wight

Nicky was very envious because she had to go back to work whilst I was able to take another friend sailing for a couple of days before he had to fly off to Hong Kong.  Again the weather was pretty dull but we visited one of my favourite seafood restaurants in Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight called Salty's.  Good company and a very pleasant crab and fish meal.  We sat next to a really fun group of three friends staying in a cottage in Yarmouth; they joined us for drinks onboard BV after dinner and reciprocated by inviting us over to their cottage for breakfast.  We were spoilt with a fantastic cooked breakfast which set us up nicely for the day.  An easy pace of life, great company, tasty food and the chance to meet interesting new people.  All the tenants of the new life onboard that Nicky and I aspire to experience - roll on the start of the adventure!

So, confident that BV is fully functional, it is back home for a few days to keep on top of things there.  We are starting to research our likely destinations with some recently updated pilot books, and a more generic book with the latest ideas on cruising in the Mediterranean.  I'm also enjoying reading Paul Theroux's book The Pillars of Hercules.  It tracks his travels around the coast of the Mediterranean in the mid 90s and provides an interesting and amusing insight into the character of the region, the history and the people.  He started his travels out of season which changes the perspective significantly as many places are very quiet.  Probably useful information for us given that we intend to be in the Mediterranean for far more than the standard summer holiday period.