"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. . . Explore. Dream. Discover."

BYE BYE Gibraltar!

 

We’re ship shape and Bristol fashion! Full crew and all functional, 2 men with empty wallets after our 5^th trip to the supermarket provisioning! Stu and Alan have port rot and ready to go! We set sail tomorrow morning at 10am for our first offshore passage to Lanzarotte.  We anticipate it will take us 6 days of sailing to get there! There we plan to be there for 3 more days.  We will be in a marina so we will hopefully get good wifi and have lots of skype with friends and family!  We will make sure we blog along the way!!!

 

We have met a number of boats in Gib that have chosen to sail through the Suez Canal (danger waters!) and have some pretty close calls (like 60 miles away from the boat that was recently attacked by Somalies!).  One boat was a young family!  Crazy people!!!  We can confirm we are heading no where near those waters and area amazed by these stories! 

 

We are happy to announce the safe arrival of Margaret this morning, and we are all now waiting for Stuart to put together our feast tonight of  cooked chicken, salad and nice fresh bread!!! Yum yum!!!

 

Love to all at home and abroad!

 

Ocean Lady

xx

We have arrived in Gibraltar!

Wahay…Laura finally gets a chance to blog!!! Here it goes!

 

We arrived to a very sunny Spain (Roquetas) to a beautiful boat, unpacked, craned the boat out of the water so we (that’s the royal we!! I did the shopping!) can work on changing the propeller, I made the sandwiches for lunch! Which personally I think was the biggest contribution to the days activities!  Then after getting the boat back in the water, I was delegated the task of cleaning bird poo off all the boat covers, and this is where it all went wrong!!!  My plans of throwing myself into the yachtie life, hoisting the sails, grinding the winches and covering my night watch to Gibraltar didn’t quite happen!  Eeek…whilst bent over cleaning poo of sail covers my back decided its had enough and gave way! So the past 4 days has seen me in laid up in the cabin with a bad back!   Not quite the start to the trip I had planned!

 

So whilst Stu and Alan have prepared the boat for sea, sailed the boat from Roquetas to Gibraltar (overnight), cooked three evening meals, and made copious amounts of tea/coffee…Lady muck here has had her feet up watching them and being waited on hand and foot! Something tells me I’m not going to live this down! The good news is after 4 days of being laid up I am now on deck, moving normally and fighting off the mickey taking.

 

Apparently according to my two crewman, our first sail was accompanied with lots of showers and headwinds and then no wind and plenty of motoring! (didn’t miss much then did I J ) however, they were accompanied by a pod of dolphins following the boat at night distinguished by the phosphorescent glow, I hope we see lots more of this!!!

 

We arrived in Gibraltar this afternoon, sun is shining and all is looking good! We hope that Margaret will join us by the weekend, and we can all head to Lanzarotte together.  Please come soon…the male conversation consists of too much boaty language I struggle to understand. 

 

Missing you all lots but now I’m up and about we are all looking forward to a fully functioning crew, and a nice sail to Lanzarotte.  We think weather permitting and Margaret’s arrival we will leave either Friday or Sunday. 

 

xx

 

 

Preparations!!

Dear all,

We are safely aboard Ocean Lady. The flight was good and on time despite having to get up at 02.30 to get to the airport on time.

 

The sun covers have been washed, Ocean Lady was lifted out, bottom cleaned, propeller changed, anti-foul touched in. She’s now back in the water, we still have lots of provisioning to do and plan to leave Roquetas del Mar to Saturday to sail to Gibraltar.

 

Love to all,

 

Speak Soon

 

 

T minus 9 hours!

Here we go!!!

Laura’s leaving party was a great success, thank you Sian, Lisa and Elaine for your efforts organising a great send off. Well done everyone keeping it a secret - I know there were a few close moments!

 

Thank you Linda for dropping us off at Alan and Margaret’s.

 

Thank you everyone for your well wishes,

 

Ocean Lady

Nearly there!!

Hi everyone,

Just thought I’d better start using the blog site we’ve set up.

15 days left in the UK, Laura finishes work at the end of this week, before spending a week with family and friends in Cardiff. I’ve still got a week and a bit left in work L

We’ve moved out of my house and our tenants seem to be settling in ok. A big thank you to Matt, Steph and Grace for letting Laura and I use their house in the meantime.

Stu x