Mark and Karen's Blog (4)

Not the result we were expecting ! 

We had planned to take a couple of friends over to Northern Ireland for a weeks sailing in Belfast Lough, two hours into the ten hour trip and the weather changed completely with large rough seas and a good 28knts steady wind instead of the 12-14 on the forecast. One of our friends fell ill, really ill and so we headed to the Isle…

As part of our plans to set up for blue water cruising we have a few planned changes we wish to make (over time) to the power around the boat. One of the first things was to get an inverter and later we will supplement the battery capacity with a third domestic battery and some wind and solar generation.

Its not a hard modification to do, but it is something you have to take care with as one side is shore power voltage (240V for us) and the other is huge cables (70 sq mm) onto big…

Spent the weekend bringing the teak back to that ‘new’ look. Used products from a company called Onward Trading who supplied the active cleaner and neutraliser (stage one and two) and a coloured sealant from Semco.

Took a lot longer than I thought it would given that we don’t have a full teak deck, just the cockpit, toe rail and coach roof.

We like the golden honey colour while others like the aged silver look however the ‘teak oil’ we used last year must have contained linseed…