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SAILING FROM UK TO THE MED

ImageHarbourguides yacht Knight Song has now been transported from Lake Windermere. Jim at Maiden Marine did the lift out for us and took the mast down. The service they provided was excellent, so a big thank you to them. The transport company we used for the trip from the lake to Preston was Sealand Boat Deliveries Limited, who also advertise on the Harbourguides site. Again they provided a great service and Knight Song was safely delivered to Preston, so a big thank you to Sealand also.
The boat arrived in Preston on 15th of March 2012 and was put in the boatyard at Preston Marina on the hard while we carry out the various jobs before we set sail to the Mediterranean hopefully sometime in May.
Among the jobs we are carrying out are fitting a new Volvo Penta sail drive seal, fitting Autopilot, Installing Chart plotter and Radar, antifouling, new VHF radio, new sat nav, etc the list goes on and on, and so does the cost. We feel it will be worth it though as the boat is an important part of future plans for Harbourguides efforts to expand our business into Europe.
We are also having a new spray hood fitted and Steve Goacher at the excellent Goacher Sails in Bowness on Windermere is making one for us. We have used Goacher Sails for other jobs in the past and would recommend them highly.
Our planned route is to have a shakedown sail from Preston to Fleetwood, and if all is well set sail from Fleetwood to Southern Ireland maybe Kinsale or somewhere nearby. From here we aim to go south to La Coruna, Spain. This is one of our longest legs of the journey at well over 500 nautical miles of open sea. As we hope to average 5 to 6 knots this leg will take four to five days maybe longer depending on the weather.
Once in La Coruna we aim to drop down the Atlantic coast of Portugal, all the way to enter the Mediterranean via the Strait of Gibraltar. As most of this leg can be reasonably close to land, we will no doubt make plenty of overnight stops in the various marinas along the Portuguese coast.
We will be staying in Gibraltar for a few weeks as our harbour guide to Gibraltar needs updating. So one of our reps will fly out to stay on the boat and update the guide, a kind of working holiday. We certainly don’t have any problems with volunteers when it comes to working this site.
Once the Gibraltar harbour guide has been updated we will travel East then North East to our chosen marina for “Knight Song” Which is the lovely Port Ginesta in between Barcelona and Stiges, although this may change if we find something more suitable on our journey.
These are our plans but “Man plans and god laughs” so the saying goes, and as with any passage of this nature nothing is written in stone and we will need to be flexible and open to any change of plans.
We aim to do the trip with a crew of five,and the crew up to date consists of Steve Mallinson, Lance Shepherd and his daughter Haley Shepherd. Both Lance and Haley are experienced sailors and despite Haley only being nineteen years of age she has completed several Bay of Biscay crossings and recently completed her first Atlantic crossing.The fourth crew member is Chris Webb who will be the yachts cook, he has little sailing experience but is willing to learn and cooks a mean meal. The fifth crew member hasn't been finalised yet. We will have more information on the five crew members in a later update on our trip.
We will be keeping everyone updated on our journey via this page and hope to make it informative and interesting to our site visitors.
So hope to speak soon and here’s wishing “Knight Song” A Bon Voyage!!!
If you have any stories you would like to share with Harbourguides visitors please send them to cew@harbourguides.com or give us a call to discuss it on +44 (0)1253 795 912
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Comments (3)
18/06/2012 @ 8:49 pm
Murdoch
Try the marina at Almerimar, Andalucia. Great facilities, cheap to stay over. good local bars, chandlers and other Marina facilities. This is an under rated marina with lots of free berths due mainly, I presume, because of the recession.
09/04/2012 @ 4:11 pm
Shaz
Oh Mally..Sounds very exciting! Good luck and have a great trip..
05/04/2012 @ 10:12 am
Dee
Good luck guys...have a great trip hope to see you in Barcelona xx
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