About BV

'Blue Velvet of Sark' (or 'BV' for short) is a Rustler 42 cutter rigged sailing yacht with a long fin keel and skeg underwater hull shape.  She was designed by Steven Jones to try to match all of the key design parameters live-aboard blue-water sailors seemed to value.  She is our pride and joy as well as being our home for this adventure.  Here a few photos and some information to give you a feel for what she is about.

Down Below:

Aloft:

Sailing:

Why 'of Sark'?

The short answer is a mixture of superstition, bureaucracy and the size of Blue Velvet's transom.

When we bought her she was named Blue Velvet of Dart.  She is Part 1 registered (like a ship) and the rules of that game are that there can be no duplication of ships' names.  Blue Velvet had already been taken hence she was named Blue Velvet of Dart by the original owners.  We could have left things as they were and re-registered as 'of Dart' but Dartmouth has no relevance for us.  In hindsight it would have been easier to leaving well alone, however, we thought it would be nice to register Blue Velvet where we ultimately intend to keep her, in Guernsey.

The Blue Velvet part of the name stayed as it is supposed to be bad luck to change the name of a yacht or ship, plus all  of the brass plaques, switchboards etc have Blue Velvet on them.  So Blue Velvet of Guernsey was the first plan as Guernsey is where Nicky's family is from and it is our planned retirement base.  However, having embarked on name changing we discovered that you can't name a Part 1 registered vessel 'of Guernsey'.  The size of the lettering is also controlled so we discovered that there wasn't really enough available space on the transom for 'of Guernsey' or indeed 'of St Peter Port'.

Sark is in the Bailiwick of Guernsey being an island right next door; in a flash of inspiration we thought we might get away with just changing two letters on the transom to rename her 'Blue Velvet of Sark' and secure the link to the Bailiwick of Guernsey.  The Register of Shipping liked the idea (plus the cheque to change the name) but, having started to process the application, decided that the size of the existing lettering on the transom was not up to scratch.  We therefore ordered a whole new set of 'Blue Velvet of Sark' decals in the right size and wondered if we should have just bought a house in Dartmouth.