Back on board

Juniper sailing round GB
Gordon and Catherine
Sat 18 Jun 2011 17:14

We’ve enjoyed a couple of days on terra firma but are now back on board, provisioned up and ready to go tomorrow (Sunday) if the weather’s OK.  I realise that I sometimes forget to put things in the blog so today is a sort of catch-up before we go any further.  Lymington – I forgot to say that we were introduced to Leslie Powles who was berthed a couple of boats away.  Leslie took up sailing in his 50s, built his own yacht and has since circumnavigated the world single-handed 3 times, the second time non-stop - a real character.   Dartmouth – I meant to say that as you enter the harbour there are castles on both sides of the harbour, making for a very picturesque entrance. Dartmouth to Torpoint -  the chart says to keep a good watch for submarines as they exercise in the area – how do you keep watch for a submarine?  Torpoint – I’ve been keeping track of our total journey and we’ve now covered 534 miles – sounds good but that’s only about ¼ of the way round – and it’s taken us 6 weeks.  At this rate we’ll still be going in the Autumn so that’s thrown up a dilemma.  We’d love to stop and enjoy interesting places, and stay in harbour if the weather’s not very nice but, if we do that, we won’t get the ‘badge’ because we simply won’t get round. We’ve agreed that this time is about getting round; another year we can come back to an area and explore it properly.