What a period of time has gone by! Time flies, and it flies when you are busy – and I have been very busy with a lot of other things other than Kelsall39 and my own boat. To just name one which has kept me occupied it was the Ocean Globe Race around the world race, which lasted from September 2023 to April 2024, months and months away. I sailed on the classic yacht Pen Duick VI as engineer… and well, there’s just so much to tell about the whole experience and the places we stopped and the days and months at sea in the farthest away places on Earth.
What’s important now, and why I’m writing this little blog post is to say that my boat is up and running again and I think it better condition than ever before – so I’m very excited to say that we’re going sailing again! The jobs I’ve done are many, and there’s been lots of great people around to help me with all the work.
The biggest news in terms of work done is that we have just finished the major complete re-doing of the deck areas. It started down in Portugal in 2021 where all the old layers of paint were removed, down to the fibreglass. Many litres of filler went down to smooth out all the imperfections, and then a layer of light fibreglass cloth was added to all surfaces to seal them from any fissures or cracks. This has always been a problem with this boat due to temperature expansion and contraction of the large structural fiberglass roving below the deck paint system. This new cover of epoxy fibreglass will hold everything in place. I can’t tell you how much work all this has been… it’s hard for me to believe that finally it’s all done and finished! It’s crazy!
Last summer the boat was in the boatyard the whole time, which is when I also redid all the below the waterline areas of the boat, another giant job which took weeks of work. These areas are now treated with many layers of epoxy primer, and look better than ever. What’s really nice is that this time I decided to not paint the boat with any antifouling – so I am now on a boat which is less toxic, and like this I will be polluting the waters much much less. The only thing is that the bottom has to be cleaned and scrubbed more often when I’m in the saltwater, but that’s an OK compromise.
Anyway, enough of the excitement talking about all the work which has been done! I am here to write about the next sailing project. So, what I’m doing is putting out looking-for-crew adverts because as always I need help sailing, and it’s always better to share an experience too. The period for this next adventure is only 20 days, but that’s how it is… time is limited and I have to go and work pretty soon.
The first part is to visit the Maritime festivals here in Brittany at Brest and Douarnenez…. but the priority is the festival at Douarnenez which is from the 18th July. The boat will be very busy, and lots of people are interested – which is great. We will live at anchor, and every day the idea is to go sailing and explore the area and see all the other boats out on the water. In the evenings there will be lots of things to do in town, so the boat will just be a convenient place to go to get some rest, or eat food.
The second part of the sailing is ater the Douarnenez festival and will take us from Brittany across to Ireland, and back. This is to give the boat time to stretch her legs a little after all the months being locked up in harbour. I’m curious to visit more of Ireland, and I think it is a trip I will be doing again many times in the future.
I’m not going to make any detailed plans here in the blog, but get in touch with me instead and we can see about making plans!
Looking forwards to it, and see you soon on the water!
