Gaia's adventures

Vessel Name: Gaia
Vessel Make/Model: Dehler 35 CWS
Hailing Port: Port Dinorwic
Crew: Mark Davies, Ian Cheek and Ged Tyrer
About: Three men in a boat and intending to aim it towards A Coruña.
04 August 2019
31 July 2019
31 July 2019
31 July 2019
29 July 2019
29 July 2019
29 July 2019
29 July 2019
28 July 2019
28 July 2019
27 July 2019
27 July 2019
27 July 2019
26 July 2019
24 July 2019
30 June 2019 | Royan
30 June 2019 | Royan
30 June 2019 | Royan
28 June 2019
28 June 2019
Recent Blog Posts
04 August 2019

We did it

Apologies for late update.

31 July 2019

Jack Sound

Just gone through Jack Sound and Ramsey Sound in about an hour.

31 July 2019

31 July 2019

Off we go again.

We set off from Neyland at about 11am to come back to Port Dinorwic. We are planning to go through Jack Sound and Ramsey Sound which will be interesting.

29 July 2019

Bloody Neyland

Coming into Milford Haven is pretty challenging. Lots of lights and confusion. I managed to pilot us through all that and then managed to put us aground just outside the entrance.

29 July 2019

Milford Haven

The curse of head winds continues. The wind was from North East and set to get stronger. It looked unlikely we would make Bardsey for tomorrow morning’s tide and with a strengthening NE wind, crossing the bar Tuesday evening looks unlikely so we have turned around and are heading for Neyland marina [...]

Royan

30 June 2019 | Royan
Mark Davies
On Friday morning, about 930am we left Hendaye to go to Royan. The forecast (before we left) predicted mostly light westerly winds. The distance was 142 miles.
We started off with a north easterly wind. A couple of hours in I still had a phone signal so got another forecast - light northerlies and no westerly until Saturday.
After three hours of motor sailing the engine overheated.
We sailed, beating to windward for about 16 hours not going very far in the right direction.
Clear in my mind that the engine problem is coolant circulation, at 2am we tried motoring again - leaving the engine covers off. It ran for 13 hours at low revs.
The wind was better for sailing - actually easterly!
Eventually the wind went westerly and then another dilemma. The shortest route was by the southerly channel. The pilot book warned of dangerous overfalls with wind over tide. That is what we had. Not only that, our bail out was to tack into the westerly and didn’t have an engine we could fully rely on.
I opted to go the wider, north channel. A lot further.
The engine did behave itself at the last and we finally got in at midnight. Over 39 hours (versus 26 hours expected) and 164 miles logged (versus 142).
Today I leave the boat to fly home on 2 July. Thank goodness.
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Created 18 May 2019

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