Las Palmas

Amazing Grace
John and Julie
Thu 5 Nov 2009 18:15
We are here!  We consider it a great achievement considering the state we found the boat in on January 19th!  To date, we've sailed nearly 3900 miles and explored the envelope of boat behaviour.  All in all,  we're very happy with it. Especially when we see the boats that others have bought and had delivered and the stories thay have had to tell.  Sadly, it seems that there is a common thread and that is that no boats are delivered without problems.  The difference is what the manufacturers do with the problems.  Strangely, even although Broadblue went bust, followed closely by the builders of our boat, Hillyards, we have had much better than the average support from the new Broadblue in the shape of Mark from Multihull World.

He's always (almost) available to discuss any aspect of the boat and has given us plain and good advice - even down to advising on better quality items that we might consider as compared to what is generally available.  Better still, he listens and it seems that some of the things we have discovered are working their way into 'product improvement' and will appear in the new boats as they are built. Keep it up - please!

Its going to be an interesting crossing from our perspective. We have, moored in front of us, the 415 '001' which is the original Broadblue 415 and was sold last year.  Its a light boat since it does not have the benefit of oodles of cruising geear that we have laden our boat with to date. Neither does she have 750 litres of diesel aboard.  She sits a good 2 inches higher in the water at the stern too!  However, she had a similar passage time from Portimao to Lanzarote, leaving 12 hours or so before us.  How this will pan out over 2750 miles will be interesting! We are definately going for comfort rather than speed but with exactly the same boat and the same sails, it will be down to tactics and weight! 

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