Silhouette: Our Home for a Year

Silhouette
Pieter, Pauline, Robyn and Kerry Lindeque
Sat 1 Jun 2013 10:42
Silhouette is a Benetteau 473. That means she is 47feet (or 14metres) and weighs 10 tons. Her maximum width is 4.3m

  • Silhouette sails at average of 7 knots
  • She holds 600 litres of water in tanks (we should be able to last 3 weeks on this water if we have to - strict rationing)
  • She can take 474 litres of diesel which we hope will cover 1000 miles.
  • We have a small gas cooker and fridge (no freezer as this uses too much power).
  • We have 540 Amp Hour of battery power which would last 1 day while sailing without charge. We will keep our batteries topped up with wind, solar and water generators and as a last resort charge using the engine alternator.
coquepe.jpgdes3cpe.jpg

Here are some photos of her
Cooking (640x480).jpgSaloon (640x480).jpg

Cooking in the 'kitchen' (galley)                            and relaxing in the 'lounge' (saloon)

P1000520 (640x480).jpg relaxing on the 'patio' (or should I say cockpit)



  What we found during our previous long sailing trip (1998-2002) is that 1/3 of the nights where spent sailing,  a 1/3 at anchor and a 1/3 in a marina. We motored a lot more than we wanted due to lack of wind.  A LOT of time is spent on maintenance and shopping for groceries is a lot more time consuming than at home. This time round we will add year 8 schooling to the agenda but of course leave enough time for sightseeing, diving, cycling, etc etc.

See you all in August 2014. Hope you enjoy the blog. Please tell us if you do as we will be picking up our normal emails.
Pieter, Pauline, Robyn and Kerry