China Girl, UK Circumnavigation - Year 7

We left Inverness yesterday for the short 8 mile trip to anchor at Fortrose. We decided this would be good to ease us back into the swing of yachting. It was a good decision, we were very rusty. It was a beat so we ended up doing 11 miles in 2 1/2 hours in bright sunshine but a cold northerly wind. [...]

17 May 2025

Solar panels

So we relaunched on Wednesday, cleaned, polished, put the sails on, checked, double checked aiming aiming ready to go today (Saturday). The improvement over the winter has been the addition of solar panels. We bought two fixed panels and a foldable, stowable one. We commissioned the boat yard top [...]

17 May 2025 | Fortrose

Welcome back - to tales of winter maintenance

We arrived in Inverness on Monday (12 May) for a couple of nights in a hotel as CG was out of the water. To cut a very long story short, CG needed the seal between the sail drive and the hull replace. The sail drive sticks through the bottom of the hull through an oval-shaped hole about 30 cm long and [...]

05 September 2024

Inverness and home

From Cromarty to Inverness, CG's winter home was only 17 miles, the wind was very light, we got 10 minutes of sailing in our last trip of the season but essentially it was a motoring day.

05 September 2024

Cromarthy firth

This is the view from CG looking the other way in Cromarty Firth. No so good.

05 September 2024

Off to Cromarty

Wick to Cromarty in our passage plan was 55 miles, mostly on a heading of about 220 (SSW). The wind had been south-westerly for days and we didn't fancy a 55 mile beat so we delayed and watched the weather like hawks. Eventually a day of Westerlies, not too strong was forecast so we went for it. We [...]

Belfast

16 July 2022 | Belfast Marina.

Ann and Steve Crome | Dill, overcast, some drizzle

So here we are in Belfast, with wifi and decent 4G, yippee. Ardglass to an anchorage at Copeland Island, which is at the south east corner of Belfast lough, 30 miles in 5 hours another excellent sail. Overnight there, pretty but not much to see, then a quick hop 19 miles in 4 h to Belfast city centre marina. Not the prettiest approach but the marina is OK, the showers are brilliant and the location walking distance from the city centre. What's not to like. Here till the 20th. On the 19th Steve Arnold, a sailing friend of long standing, is joining us for six nights. We'll decide where we are going with him (and the weather forecast!). In the meantime we are back to tourism (Belfast hop on hop off bus tour is very good) and boat cleaning. Photo shows the approach to Belfast marina, the Titanic exhibition building just in shot on the left.

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