The Great Escape - the saga continues

It's all a bit frustrating at the moment really. We're champing at the bit to get on with things but solicitors and banks seem incapable of moving along quickly

To recap, we're now simply waiting for the last piece of paperwork on the purchase of the house in Kettering and then we can exchange contracts and agree completion dates on both properties.

I'm going to be pushing all parties hard on that next week, I want the earliest possible completion date set in concrete by next Friday.

The lift out and survey on the new boat is booked for the second weekend in January. Unless the keels fall off or something equally dramatic I don't expect to learn anything that will put us off or affect the deal. (In fact, as there's a survey less than 10 years old available, we could have avoided the expense of having a survey done now. However, we'd then have needed a survey all the sooner and given that we're blowing our entire budget on the purchase it's probably wise to get the boat checked over and make certain there are no hidden nasty surprises)

We're now in the middle of two trips down to Erbas in less than a week! We've come down this weekend to have a major clear out of all our personal gear, which really needs to come off over the winter anyway, and to move as much of the boat kit as possible that won't be sold with Erbas into the Boson 's Store

It's a properly windy day today and we had a bit of a disturbed night last night. Not so much the wind, that really doesn't bother us much, but neither of us slept that well.

We'll crack on in a while, it shouldn't take long to do what needs doing, and then it's back home in the morning.

We'll be back down on Wednesday to spruce up Erbas to look her best as a chap is coming to look at her on Thursday. It would be very useful indeed if we could sell Erbas at around the same time as buying Pagan, or even sooner, thus avoiding owning two boats which can get very costly!

On with the kettle I think and then it's time for some action!

Some further thoughts on Bigger Boat

Nearly all respondents have been various shades of green with envy but one or two have been politely negative about our decision to buy a Westerly Vulcan and I can understand that

So I thought I'd expand on yesterdays post with some of the logic and reasoning behind the decision

Firstly let's deal with the aesthetics. She is without doubt a bit of a Marmite boat looks wise. You know, you either like it or loathe it! With the best will in the world the Vulcan could never be described as a pretty boat, I have to confess but then we'll be on the inside looking out :)

In fact, I had been expecting to be put off by the looks when we went to look at her and I found that I rather like her style. She's chunky, purposeful and honest and the colour scheme has been carefully chosen to ease her lines and avoid her looking like a total brick. A bit of a brick, maybe but not a total brick!

Looks are however only superficial. They are also a matter of opinion.

The other negative comment that has been raised is the potential sailing performance. And here I think it is a matter of expectations. If you buy seven and a half tons of floating brick with shallow bilge keels and a rig that is modest by performance boat standards and then expect her to slice up to windward like a racing yacht you are most definitely going to be disappointed.

However, our sailing involves and will always involve relatively short hops from port or anchorage to port or anchorage with the absolute bare minimum of passage making. And when we set out on extended cruising as we plan to do as soon as we've spent all the money we need to spend on the things we need to spend it on, we'll have the luxury of not having to sail to a timetable.

So what if she sails to windward like a, well yes OK, brick? If the wind is blowing the wrong way we either go the other way, don't go at all or we bite the bullet and fire up the iron topsail. The plain truth of the matter is that in five years of bashing around the East Coast with trips as far afield as Norfolk, Chichester and Belgium, I can count the number of times we've spent more than an hour or two beating to windward on the fingers of one hand. It's fun for a while but after a while you start to think "I can spend the next six hours doing this or I can hit the starter and be there in three" and it's on with the engine again.

My only absolute requirement is that a boat be weatherly enough to claw her way off a lee shore in the event of engine failure. I'm satisfied the Vulcan will do that, if we can make her do better (and we do seem, somehow, to be able to get bilge keelers to go although I really don't know what it is we do right!) that will be a happy bonus.

The chunky, to some indeed ugly, looks and the unspectacular sailing performance are the price we are paying for a simply vast amount of space and comfort. As I said yesterday, she really is a tardis boat. Her relatively short length for the amount of accommodation will keep visitor mooring fees down (it's not relevant to our mud berth as we pay a 15m minimum charge so we can have a 4.5m dinghy on there as well if we like ... and that may one day happen as I quite fancy something to mess about in)

And the accommodation is simply awesome. And there's the rub you see

When you get right down to it, we'll be spending maybe forty or fifty days at sea at the most in any given year (except the Round Britain year when it will rise to around 120) which means we'll be spending well over three hundred days on board in our home berth, in a visitor berth or at anchor.

So in return for Marmite looks and staid sailing, we're getting a fabulously comfortable saloon, a really decent galley and three separate sleeping cabins (although I have designs on the aft cabin which may be converted into a workshop albeit with the ability to convert it back again quickly when we're going to sea or need the guest accommodation).

You might ask why we need those cabins when there's only two of us but we've got family and friends we like to have around and especially moving away from the Midlands it will be great to have the room for guests without compromising our living space.

And storage? Jeez, our biggest problem is likely to be losing stuff and never ever finding it again! There are even lockers in lockers! I may need storage ashore for the business before long but I think we can safely see that we will not need to store anything ashore for ourselves. In fact, the problem is likely to be ensuring that we don't revert to our bad habits of keeping stuff we don't really need.

Every choice of boat is a compromise. I would have dearly loved to buy an old gaffer, it has been my dream for as long as I can remember to one day own a classic gaff rigged pilot cutter or something of that ilk. But the reality is that within our budget, even stretched to within an inch of its life as it is now being, we were simply not going to get an adequate level of comfort and accommodation to make living aboard the year round a viable option (I know others manage quite happily sometimes in extraordinarily small boats but it wouldn't work for us).

On this decision I firmly put the heart in its box and made a strictly head choice. The Vulcan not only hits all the essential nails on the head, it bangs them firmly into the woodwork and clenches them over on the other side for good measure!

We've found Bigger Boat!

And paid a deposit on her so unless something goes wrong it's a done deal :)

And here she is ...

Say hello to "Safe Return", although she won't be keeping the name (for reasons that will become clear shortly). She's a 1980 Westerly Vulcan 34 Deck Saloon yacht, technically a motor sailer but with a respectable if unspectacular sail area to displacement ratio (comparable to Erbas and better than several other boats we've been considering) a decent if steady sailing yacht none the less

She's currently the Estuary Sailing school yacht and therefore MCA coded for 6 people up to sixty miles offshore. As such she is, of course, in tip top condition inside and out. She's been re-engined, the sails are in good condition and all the essentials are in good order.

The technical stuff ...

She's 34' long, 11'9" beam and displaces a tads over 7 tonnes. She's the twin keel version with a draught of 4'3" which is well within the constraints of our mud berth. She carries around 700 square feet of sail (depending on the exact cut of the genoa) and she comes with a cruising chute and a spinnaker, the latter having a snuffer.

On deck, she's got lovely wide side decks, all the deck hatches have been renewed recently and there's a powered anchor windlass although the Bruce anchor may get replaced in due course (mind you, I've been threatening to replace the Bruce on Erbas since we bought her and it hasn't happened yet. However, we'll be doing a lot more anchoring in future so better ground tackle is definitely on the shopping list).

There's also an emergency forestay even though th storm jib hanks on to the baby stay - not that we'll ever use the storm jib - and the main has three reefs in it just like Erbas

The lines aren't led aft to the cockpit from the mast which we'll see how we get on with. There are pros and cons but if we find the current setup works for us we won't be changing it for the sake of it.

The cockpit is not huge. It is as big as it needs to be though. And of course she's a deck saloon so the cockpit is less critical as a social space.

There is a simply vast cave locker under the starboard cockpit seat which you can climb into and stand up in! I'm not so sure about the added wooden storage box at the stern which looks a little odd. If it stays I think it might get a coat of white paint as it looks a bit out of place

The stern gantry carries two solar panels and a Rutlad 913 wind generator. Unfortunately, at some point in her life, the davits that used to extend off the gantry have been cut off. So dinghy davits are another item on our shopping list.

And she doesn't come with a cockpit tent which we'd like to have especially for the liveaboard side of things.
That may have to wait awhile for budgetary reasons

The only other "issue" is that the instrumentation is somewhat dated and basic and there's very little info available at the main helm. As a sailing school boat that would not, of course, matter but for our needs I'd like to have the plotter, instruments and ideally the radar (on a combined display with the plotter) at the sailing helm. However, the budget probably won't stretch to all new instrumentation in the short term so we may simply do a bit of re-arranging of the location of the existing serviceable equipment

So that's the outside. She's chunky rather than pretty, steady rather than exciting and capable, even versatile, too. She may not win races around the cans but she'll sail around Britain, at a respectable pace and go virtually anywhere. She'll handle any amount of rough weather and look after her crew. Just the ticket.

So now for down below...

We seriously considered calling her "Tardis". The amount of accommodation and stowage is astonishing for a 34' boat. She feels more like something well over fourty feet down below. Here's the plan ...

Starting aft and working towards the bow ...

Stepping down from the saloon on the port side aft and through a door by the chart table is the aft single cabin ...


The headroom is a little limited it's true but it's a really nice private space for one at the opposite end of the boat from the rest of the accomodation.

In common with the rest of the boat, there's not only a berth and a small seat, there's acres of stowage and storage too


 Emerging from the aft cabin, in the well by the door, is the chart table

The original swing seat, more of a perch really, is long gone and we'll need to contrive a seating arrangement if this space is to be used as more than just an occasional chart table at sea. I'd like to make it an office space too and I have a notion of how to arrange a fold up seat but that's a "future project"

 The smaller of the two chart plotters on board is here and may well migrate to one of the helm positions as I use the laptop for my passage planning and only need a plotter under way.

From the nav table we step up into the saloon, or step down into the saloon from the cockpit of course ...

The saloon is fabulous. Spacious, light and airy without feeling like you're in a goldfish bowl (something we've previously noted with dislike in other deck saloon yachts)

And as the eagle eyed will have noticed already, there's an inside helm position for those horrible days when you have to make progress but really wish you didn't. No more hours of misery getting cold and wet at the helm for us!

The starboard settee extends back under the side deck and can be made up as a big double bed. There's another huge storage space below it, more storage below the sole aft and forward and yet more capacious locker space under the port berth. And shelves above too!

Stepping down from the saloon and turning to port brings us to the galley ...

An almost brand new gas cooker, twin sinks, plenty of worktop space and once again unbelievable stowage. The original under counter cool box is still in situ in the far corner but it's currently redundant as there is an Isotherm fridge at the aft end of the galley in a cubby hole under the saloon sole

The original cool box might be suitable to be repurposed as a small freezer but that's another item for the long term to don't list!

Turning to starboard is the second guest cabin ...

Entering the cabin there's a small seat, a hanging locker forwards, cupboards and shelves above and a narrow double berth extending aft under the inside helm and forward end of the saloon ..



 A couple would have to be of modest girth and very much in love :) but it's usable and or a single guest it's superb.

There is, of course, yet more stowage under the bed

On the port side forward of the galley is the heads ...

A good old basic hand pumped and ultra-reliable Lavac toilet, sink, shower and once again storage to die for!

Hot running water is, by the way, provided by a 35l calorifier in the cavernous locker below the aft end of the saloon.

There is a holding tank although it's currently being used as a fresh water toilet flush tank. It can easily be changed back and I reckon we can probably squeeze a flush water tank in somewhere!!!

And finally we come to the v-berth...

It's a decent sized berth with the usual infill, a hanging locker to starboard and, you won't be surprised to learn, loads of storage both visible and invisible.

This will be our master cabin, it's more spacious than the v-berth on Erbas and we're more than happy with that space so this will be luxury

We may convert the upper set of shelves into lockers at some point but it's the to don't list again!

Mechanically, the engine is under the centre section of the saloon sole ...

It's a 55hp Yanmar installed new in 2008 with about 1400 hours on it. The engine is so clean you could eat your dinner off it!

Carole, the sailing school proprietor and owner, reckons she'll use around 2.2l an hour at 5 and a half knots which is around double our current consumption albeit with an extra knot of speed.

That said, I've found that if we wind Erbas up to over 5 knots rather than 4.5, the consumption rises from around 1.2l an hour to nearer 2l an hour

There's quite an inventory of kit to come with her - another inflatable dinghy, a Mariner 2.5hp outboard and the 8 man liferaft is going to be swapped for the 4 man raft that's on the boat Estuary Sailing are buying to replace "Safe Return" as an 8 man is too large for our needs (not only too heavy but also quite dangerous with only a couple of people in it. There's a spinnaker with a snuffer, a cruising chute, spare main and genoa and so on.

So there she is, our new home

We're not talking about what we're paying for her! More than we can afford but we've decided to stretch the budget as she's so ideally suited to our future plans. And to sweeten the deal Carole has offered to throw in a couple of days own boat tuition and showing us where everything is when we take her over

On that front, we've shaken hands, paid a deposit and agreed the deal but we won't be taking ownership until around February or perhaps early March as we've got to complete on the house move and Carole needs to complete the purchase of the replacement yacht for the sailing school.

We've got a shopping list of improvements and modifications we'd like to make when we can afford it (if ever!) but none of it is vital.

Oh and the name ... we've offered to relinquish the name "Safe Return" as the sailing school website is www.safereturnsailing.co.uk and the name doesn't do anything much for us anyway. As to what she will be called in our ownership, that's a secret for now. You'll have to wait and see

The Fog on the Crouch ...

... unlike The Fog on the Tyne does not make for a good song lyric. It doesn't make for much of a trip on the river either which we'll come to shortly

I picked Jane up from the Big Shed at Six, typically of course she had to work an hours overtime when we wanted to get away sharpish (it always seems to happen). It was an easy drive down in the quite traffic of an early Saturday morning and we were soon aboard.

Jane went straight to bed whilst I idled about doing odds and sods, drank coffee and then late morning set about getting the boat ready to leave our berth.

Much to my annoyance, the tiller pilot was deader than a very dead thing. Whether the unit itself is u/s (and it's the replacement for the original that came with the boat which failed) or whether we've a power supply problem I had no time to ascertain - there does seem to be a problem with a power feed somewhere as we've suddenly started getting some intermittent odd problems around the instruments, engine controls and nav gear. It's going to be a case of physician heal thyself next week!

I could live without it for this trip as we were only heading an hour and a half downriver anyway.

As soon as we had water for the cooling inlet, I sparked up the engine to start charging the batteries (you'll recall that the battery charger ceased and desisted last week - I want to have a proper look at it before we splash out the money on a new one so we're reliant on the engine alternator to charge the batteries at the moment).

Then at just about the time I expected we were able to reverse out of the berth which had to be done smartly to avoid being swept into the pontoon or the barge next to our berth since the tide was still flooding quite hard.

It was a pleasant autumnal day but what little breeze there was was from the East so there was no point in even pretending to sail. I cracked on downriver with 2,400 RPM on the engine which gave us about 4 knots over the ground against the tide. I hadn't bothered fitting the log impeller for such a short trip on the river but we must have been making somewhat over 5 knots so my efforts with the pressure washer seem to have paid off

Jane arose as we approached The Cliffs and brewed up a welcome cup of coffee - I was gasping having forgotten to make one in the rush to leave when the tide was right and without a tiller pilot it was more faff than it was worth to make one myself

Into Burnham and the berth we'd arranged by phone earlier and then on with the TV widget to watch the rugby world cup final. I just missed the kickoff but the action had only just got under way. The widget worked well even in the confines of the Yacht Harbour and I thoroughly enjoyed the game.

Then it was time to get ready and walk down to the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club for the East Coast Forum Laying Down Supper.

A fantastic evening with wonderful people and then afters aboard their boat with Jim and Lynn made for a very late night. Well, more like the early hours of the morning to be honest!

Sunday dawned but I didn't see it! By the time we felt inclined to be up and doing it was very foggy indeed. The forecast wasn't looking good for the next 24 hours either. The best time to go seemed to be an hour or two earlier than we'd have left it otherwise but we went for it in loose company with Pleinair

Radio comms came in handy with us calling other boats out to each other and by keeping close to the Northern (starboard) bank we nearly avoided the downstream traffic who were all (with one exception) doing the right thing and keeping over to their starboard on the Southern side of the river

The exception was a rowing boat that emerged out of the murk almost dead ahead and then cut across our stern to go closer to the Northern bank which perhaps wasn't the brightest of things to do. No harm done though.

We arrived back at Fambridge with enough water to get onto our berth, just, but a good knot and a half of flood still running. I could see any attempt at a clever down tide maneouver going very wrong so we popped alongside the river pontoon for an hour or so to wait for slack water

Whilst waiting, we embarked on a quick shopping trip arriving back just in time to wave Tony and Shelagh off home. Then we settled down for the evening. Home cooked sausage casserole, a wee drop of rum and the first episode of series one of Game of Thrones entertained us until bedtime

We were not early to rise on Monday morning but it didn't matter. We sorted things out in a leisurely fashion and hit the road for home around lunchtime. The journey back was without incident or undue delay too for once but I'll be glad when the hike to and fro is an occasional excercise and not something I'm doing twice a week or more - I'm back down to the boat on Wednesday for around a week in work mode!

All in all, a pleasant weekend which would only be improved by not having to travel. Can't wait!

PS. For some reason I didn't get around to taking a single photo. So there aren't any!

A few days of fiddling

I'd got a couple of free days on board with the aim of dealing with the essential maintenance tasks ahead of the winter

The first job was a minor rearrangement of the plumbing system to give us the facility of flushing the heads with fresh water. The smaller aft water tank has been dedicated to this purpose and will also deliver a temporary cooling water feed to the engine. This enables the engine to be run on the mud berth and the fresh water flush avoids picking up the silty water that tends to make a mess of the loo even when the tide is in and it can be used. We still can't use the loo when the tide is out though

The major task was the annual / 250 hour engine service. The oil and filter change went without a hitch and then I pulled the heat exchanger tube stack to examine it.

As I half expected it was more than a little choked up with crud and even some weed that had escaped the clutches of the water filter

Off I popped to the DIY store to pick up five litres of brick cleaner acid, a sovereign remedy for cleaning tube stacks and into the rubber bucket went the stack and half the acid.

Much bubbling ensued for the next hour or two with an occasional stirring of the pot to keep things going. The received wisdom is to leave it to soak overnight but it wasn't necessary as the stack came up good as new after less than three hours

With the now pristine tube stack reinstalled and the alternator belt re-tensioned, the job was done and it remained only to test run the engine utilising the fresh water feed to the seawater system for cooling

The engine ran perfectly once I got it started however the engine start battery is clearly on its last legs as I had to cross-link the domestics in to fire up the engine.

Happily there were no leaks and everything was just as it should be.

Unhappily, the Sterling battery charger took umbrage at the batteries being cross-linked as I'd stupidly forgotten to turn it off before starting the engine. Even so, it shouldn't have gone phut but it did.

So that means a new battery charger and a new engine battery. Expenses we could do without as matters are moving on apace and we now expect to be looking for a new home for Erbas within a matter of months.

Hey ho!

The Great Escape - we have a landing

And a hall, stairs, bathroom, all the usual features of a house!

Yes, we've found the house that will be Carls' new home and our temporary staging post on our way to living on board.

It's a good old fashioned Victorian terrace in a quiet side street just five minutes walk from Kettering town centre. The layout is basically typical "two up, two down" with a kitchen extension to the rear but unusually the extension is two storey with the bathroom above the kitchen and a single story utility room beyond the bathroom complete with downstairs loo (most properties of this type have a downstairs bathroom beyond the single storey kitchen extension)

There's a small garden to the rear with an outbuilding and a side alley shared with the next door neighbour.

The alley is a major plus point as it avoids having to drag wheelie bins through the house

The outbuilding is interesting and gives a clue to the history of the street. It's one of a back to back range of outbuildings that extend the whole length of the street and the parallel street beyond

Internally, it has a small storage area beyond the door where I suspect there may have originally been the toilet (or "ootside netty" as we'd have called it back home in Sunderland) which may not have been served by mains sewerage. The rest of the building is very well constructed in brick and there is even a small fireplace in the back left corner, now blocked up. The biggest clue is the large window which floods the room with light

Put that into the context of Kettering being second only to Northampton in the Victorian shoe trade and it's very likely that the houses were built for shoe trade outworkers

(The "lawn" will have to go though!)

Internally, the house is in good decorative order (although the decor wouldn't, to be honest, be what we or Carl would choose but redecorating can be left until time, money and inclination are available). It isn't large, the house we looked at earlier in the week was bigger inside but it's big enough

There's no off road parking but that would have been too much to hope for. The on street parking is residents permit only though which is a plus as it means the street isn't used by people working in the town centre trying to escape paying for all day parking.

We elected to offer the asking price given the way properties are selling like hot cakes. This house had only been listed the previous afternoon and whilst we'd got in first on it there were several viewings booked to follow us. Carl has the mortgage arranged all bar the final paperwork, I'll instruct the solicitors by email today and get the paperwork to them tomorrow and if all goes well I see no reason we can't have everything done and dusted before Christmas (and I'll be kicking the solicitors up the bottom on a regular basis to make sure the process moves along swiftly!

The time rapidly approaches when we can start the search for Bigger Boat in earnest :)

The Great Escape - we have lift off

Assuming all goes well, step one has been achieved and then some!

The motivation to get some real progress on sorting the house out came from a phone call from the agents who sold our dear departed neighbours house. Weeks after the sale had gone through, they were still receiving calls about it and they had a queue of people wanting to buy a similar property

We had had them value our place as it stood and the answer came back at a level that was unsurprising but somewhat less than we really needed to achieve. Given what next door had sold for, and the level of interest, the agents were now suggesting we could almost certainly reach the minimum we needed to move forward

So last Wednesday, with the house tidier than it has ever been in the seventeen years we've lived here, round came the photographer and the measurer to get the info to create a nice sales brochure. They didn't mess about, by mid-morning the next day I had a draught copy in my in-box and after a couple of tweaks to the wording by mid-afternoon the house was on the market.

And that's when it went mad. Berserk even. We had two viewings on Friday afternoon and I'm pretty certain the first couple would have put in an offer in due course. Then Saturday afternoon just got silly! We, literally, had people queuing in the street to view the place.

The first couple to view were clearly in love with the place. They hadn't gone away whilst the second lot were viewing and then they collared the agent conducting the viewings and tabled a genuine offer of £5k over the asking price to secure the place.

Having talked to them extensively myself and having a clear picture of their circumstances and what they wanted, we had no hesitation in accepting the offer on the spot and taking the house off the market without further ado. The remaining viewings were cancelled and that was that

(They have sorted out their solicitors already and want to complete asap so they are not messing about!)

So that brings us to phase 2 of the cunning plan - buying a flat. Or not

Because it has become increasingly clear that a flat is not actually that good an option. There are two reasons - flat prices in the Kettering area have shot up way faster than house prices (reflecting a national trend apparently) to the point where there's not a huge gap between the asking price of a two bed flat and that of a two bed terraced house. In fact, some flatts we might have been interested in are actually dearer than some houses we might fancy!

The second reason is something we had no previous experience of. Ground rent and service charges. It turns out that on average in this area these add up to upwards of £80 a month and often more than £100 a month. When you add that monthly outlay onto the cost of the mortgage on, say, a £90k flat you have an outgoing that would comfortabke fund the mortgage on a £100k plus terraced house

So we've adapted to suit and the search is now on for a two bed terraced house within walking distance of Kettering town centre.

And yesterday we found one. A rather nice one. In fact, it's an absolute cracker. Vacant possession, right location (near enough) and in absolutely apple pie order having been recently redecorated and fitted with a new kitchen

The fly in the ointment is that it's £10k over budget!

The selling agent and the mortgage advisor are looking at ways and means to do a deal on it so it's not a complete non-starter but frankly I don't think it's going to come off so the search goes on