Sailing Henrietta

Category: Older Posts

  • Exit Britain

    13th September to 12th November 2022 Dartmouth, England to Porto Santo, Portugal I’ve not been feeling inclined to write for a while. Haven’t felt inspired. There didn’t seem to be much to say. But, in case you have wondered what happened to Henrietta, here’s a brief update. Plus, it’s a good thing if I pause […]

  • To Sail or not to Sail

    26th July 2022 After a spell on land – eight months in fact – it’s hard to decide whether to sail again or stay ashore. To sail or not to sail? It is not so much a question of whether to sail again (I have done and certainly shall do more) as whether to be […]

  • An Ending

    July to October 2021 9th November In July, in a little boatyard in Totnes, a few miles upriver from Dartmouth (England), Henrietta was hauled out of the water (she needed some work). I went to live in my house (I needed some work).  It felt very strange to live in a house. Too strange. And […]

  • England Once More

    16th June to 5th July Henrietta and I reached England a few days ago. We had a mostly gentle sail from the Azores, often too gentle. We wallowed quite a lot of the 1,300 mile way in a heaving ocean with too few breaths of wind. But the wind picked up later. And then it […]

  • AZORES 2021

    21st April to 15th June It was a long slow sail most of the way from Martinique to the Azores, not at all a straight line, trying to skirt high pressure areas of little wind and then with head winds. With a broken alternator as well and Hydrovane working loose, I was happy after 25 […]

  • Martinique

    16th February to 20th April 2021 I’ve been here in Martinique for two months now. But before I tell you of life in Martinique, here’s a quick postscript for Saint Helena – that tiny isolated island of some 4,300 inhabitants in the South Atlantic, where Henrietta was not to linger and I was not allowed […]

  • Saint Helena to the Caribbean

    15th January to 15th February 2021 St Helena, over the equator once more and on to the island of Martinique. World circuit completed. What do you really look forward to when you reach your destination after a long passage? What have you missed during those solitary rolly days on the big empty ocean? For me, […]

  • South Africa to Saint Helena

    1st December 2020 to 13th January 2021 Tourist Cape Town, Christmas and a sail to Saint Helena A month in Cape Town passed quickly; a fascinating month, which included the typical cruising sailors’ diet of boat bits, tourist bits, sociable bits and unmentionable bits, plus Christmas somewhere in there. Briefly then…. First though I point […]

  • South Africa

    Réunion, Richards Bay, Durban, Knysna, Cape Town 13th October to 30th November Henrietta arrived in Cape Town last night after a busy and eventful few weeks sailing the stretch from Réunion; about 1,400 miles in one hop to Richards Bay in South Africa, then three hops and another few hundred miles round the bottom of […]

  • La Reunion

    4th September to 12th October Mountains, wine, hiking, more wine and it’s not a hedgehog  If you haven’t been here and you’re not French, you may not know much about Réunion. You may scarcely have heard of it. France probably wants to keep it a secret. So first of all here’s some geography. It’s a […]