Welcome to Jeff's Blog - An Introduction, With Photos

Jeff's blog of his life living aboard a yacht, at anchor, in the UK, with his wife, a dog and a baby.

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Jeff
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Posts: 751
Joined: Thu Oct 08, 2009 3:54 pm
Location: North Yorkshire
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Welcome to Jeff's Blog - An Introduction, With Photos

Post by Jeff »

This is our old blog, we have a new blog now, and a new bigger boat. Check it out...

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19th October 2012 - Update.

I started this blog back in 2009 when Rose and I decided to sail around the UK, get married, and raise money for the RNLI, while living aboard a Westerly Tempest, Isabella.

Since then we sailed around the UK, got married and raised money for the RNLI. We also had a daughter, Nina, and bought a bigger boat (a Nauticat 38, Towser, purchased Nov 2011), and located ourselves at anchor in Dartmouth, most of the time.

The blog started originally as follows...

8th October 2009

A few days ago (Rose will be upset I forgot the date!) I was sailing across Plymouth Sound towards Cawsand in Sailing Yacht Isabella (a Westerly Tempest) with my girlfriend Rose and our dog Lunar. The wind was in the south and blowing about 12 knots - I was at the helm - and we were under full sail.

All Rose knew was that we were going to anchor up for the night and enjoy another sunset and a barbeque - as we had done many times over the spring/summer of 2009. What she didn't know was that I was about to ask her to marry me!

While Rose nipped below for a moment, I extracted a bottle of Moet from the starboard quarter locker, and a diamond ring from the gas locker. I put the Moet in the middle of the cockpit, the ring in my back pocket and continued to helm. After what seemed like an age she finally emerged on deck with a look of puzzlement on her face as she first spied the bottle.

Rose: "What's that for?"

Me: "Celebrating"

Rose: "Celebrating what?"

Me: "Hopefully this...."

At which point I dropped to one knee, presented the ring, and attempted to say "will you marry me", but actually said something more like "will ywwwwwwwwww mmmmm eeeeee meeeeeeeee" as my mouth had stopped working properly for some reason.

Fortunately, she said yes.

--

Rose and I have been together for just over 10 years now. We met in Whitby, North Yorkshire where we both lived at the time, and where we'd both been bought up. After a number of house moves over the years we ended up, just over two years ago, moving to a house near Crediton (just North of Exeter, Devon). Neither of us had ever owned or sailed a boat of any description.

In 2007 I decided that as we lived in Devon it would be fantastic to have a boat we could use to explore the coast, do some wakeboarding/waterskiiing and some fishing. I signed up to do the RYA Powerboat Level 2 over 3 days. On day 2 I realised that the best bit was when we were at sea, and we cut the engine. I then also realised that with a decent 3 metre RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) costing in the region of £5000, the step up from that to an actual yacht was nothing like as pie in the sky as I'd previously assumed.

Couple of weeks after the Powerboat course, in August 2007, I was booked onto a 2 day start sailing course. We sailed from Brixham to Dartmouth on the first day, and back on the next. Weather was excellent. Loved it.

In November 2007 I took ownership of Genesis, a 26 foot long yacht, a Westerly Centaur. Over the winter I did the RYA Dayskipper Theory by internet correspondence course.

By the end of summer 2008, Rose and I had had a great time doing short trips in Genesis and we started to talk about getting something a bit bigger, and spending a lot more time aboard. I work on the internet for a living (I run a web development company called Aetherweb) and Rose worked for me at the time (pending next step in her academic career) so we were in the perfect position to do this. Time on Genesis had showed that the only things stopping us from being aboard for more than just the odd weekend was space.

In November 2008 we sold Genesis, and in February 2009 we bought Isabella. Isabella is another Westerly, and not much longer than Genesis (at 30.7 feet), but ticked all the boxes on the list we had made for something on/in which we could spend weeks at a time aboard.

After spending most of our time aboard through the spring/summer of 2009, and with us being in a position to be able to work from anywhere with an internet connection, we started to talk about the possiblity of being marina-less in 2010 and just crusing about the south coast.

--

Since Rose said yes the wedding planning began and it rapidly became obvious that for most people we'd invite, a Whitby wedding would be preferable (most of our friends and family are in the north east) and it also rapidly became obvious that if we were to make our way up to Whitby in Isabella, in time for the wedding, it would be flippin awesome! And while we were at it, after the wedding, it would be even more awesome to then complete the journey back to the south west (we love it down here!) by going around the top, and possibly taking in a bit of Ireland on the way!

--

Right now I'm sat on Isabella watching a fantastic sunset over Plymouth. On 30th Oct we're relocating Isabella to Sutton Harbour (for some shelter for the winter) and letting out our house. On 31st March 2010 our marina contract will expire, and our journey to Whitby will begin.

If you're interested in keeping up with how we get on, join our mailing list to get notification of new posts Rose and I have made in this forum. Details in my signature below.

Wish us luck!!!

--

Some information links:

Blog Resources - map, sponsors, technical info etc...

Yacht Isabella - Our Home & Transport...

Interactive map of our progress...

Our sponsors and people who have helped us along the way...

How to donate to our cause, the RNLI...


To join our mailing list and receive notification of blog updates, please send an email to watchblog@yacht-forum.co.uk and we'll keep you posted. You do not need to sign up to the forum to do this, and we absolutely WILL NOT share your contact details, or send you anything but notifications of new blog entries.[/url]
Last edited by Jeff on Wed Sep 11, 2013 1:00 pm, edited 10 times in total.
To join our mailing list and receive notification of blog updates, please send an email to watchblog@yacht-forum.co.uk and we'll keep you posted. You do not need to sign up to the forum to do this, and we absolutely WILL NOT share your contact details, or send you anything but notifications of new blog entries.
Jeff
Site Admin
Posts: 751
Joined: Thu Oct 08, 2009 3:54 pm
Location: North Yorkshire
Contact:

Post by Jeff »

Some pictures of us and Isabella from 2009

Isabella
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Isabella
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Jeff, Isabella & Lunar
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Rose (sailing Isabella around the Eddystone)
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Rose (Isabella in the background)
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Lunar
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To join our mailing list and receive notification of blog updates, please send an email to watchblog@yacht-forum.co.uk and we'll keep you posted. You do not need to sign up to the forum to do this, and we absolutely WILL NOT share your contact details, or send you anything but notifications of new blog entries.
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