The first of many blogs, recording our journey from our home town of Portsmouth to the depth of the rain forest in the Amazon and beyond.

Friday 1^st May we slipped Suzie Too’s lines for the last time from our berth in Royal Clarence Marina and said Goodbye to Gosport, our dear friends and sailing buddies.

After an eventful week of engine problems, due to a leaking filter pump, (many thanks to Steve from Diva who helped us get this rectified), fitting new batteries which were a different size to the previous ones and would not fit into the same housing, commissioning of the water maker and getting everything we would need on board also helping Andrew my son get a flat sorted as he’d only just got back from Canada…..phew we made our deadline.

Portsmouth harbour, leaving our familiar view of Spinnaker Tower

Passing the Needles on route as he I O W

Andrew helped us slip our lines at 17.00 Friday 1^st May, we fuelled up at Gosport Marina all of 358 litres of diesel so the credit card took a big hit.  We motor sailed against the wind, to Yarmouth picking up a buoy outside the harbour, we set our alarm for 04.00 am to catch the tide for Dartmouth.  Our heads hit the pillow as we were both exhausted and slept.  04.00 soon came and we set off, soon the sun was up and we had a lovely sail 40° to the wind across Lime bay to our destination, 12 hours later we arrive.  Dartmouth entrance is quite spectacular, steep sides, lined with trees and Dartmouth castle on the left as you enter the narrow opening.

We moored up at Darthaven marina and within minutes of landing Nicky & David Bomby arrive greeting us to Dartmouth, I made a well deserved cup of tea and biscuits for us all, (we met Nicky and David and their 2 sons Ross and Henry,  6 years ago on our 1^st flotilla holiday in Greece and we have kept in touch ever since, they now live in Kingswear over looking Dartmouth).  They kindly invited us to a BBQ at their house which overlooks the harbour it’s a beautiful setting, we had a lovely evening catching up on old times.

A beautiful start to our trip and we are looking forward to our journey.

Love to you all

Suzanne & David

Suzie Too