Intrepid Travels

Vessel Name: Intrepid Elk
Vessel Make/Model: Outremer catamaran 51
Hailing Port: Fremantle
Crew: Robert and Revle Elks
16 May 2017
06 October 2016
30 September 2016
22 September 2016
18 September 2016
17 September 2016
14 September 2016
13 September 2016
12 September 2016
10 September 2016
04 September 2016
01 September 2016
31 August 2016
30 August 2016
27 August 2016
24 August 2016
23 August 2016
21 August 2016
19 August 2016
Recent Blog Posts
16 May 2017

Cherbourg encore

We are reunited with Intrepid Elk after a winter/summer separation and it is good to be home again. IE has had a facelift and her shiny white hulls are dazzling once more. She has a beautiful new bimini (shade cover) over the helm seat, which Robert designed and which was fabricated in Portsmouth and [...]

06 October 2016

IE preparation for winter

Our sailing days for this year are over and we are once again busy getting IE ready for a winter in the northern hemisphere. This year, she will be in the water for most of the time, with a short interlude on land in a large painting shed, where she will have her hulls painted. In order to get her into [...]

30 September 2016

Cherbourg, France

It was an inky black moonless night as we slipped out of the river and across the sand bar with fishing vessel Emma Louise behind us. Revle was on the bowsprit with a spotlight looking for hazards ahead. I was at the helm, peering at our chartplotter and concentrating on following our inward track. [...]

22 September 2016

Plymouth

We made a motoring passage of 35 miles to Plymouth Sound, then battled against strong currents up the Tamar River to an anchorage at West Mud where we spent a peaceful night. Plymouth has been a major naval base for centuries and we had some close encounters with modern navy ships in the harbour. We [...]

18 September 2016

Falmouth

Our passage to Falmouth took us past The Lizard, a projecting headland with a ferocious tidal race. We passed a little too close and got caught in the race which was too bumpy for comfort. Approaching the Falmouth harbour, we had the excitement of crossing our track from June 2015 when we made landfall [...]

17 September 2016

Newlyn

We left the Isles of Scilly early in the morning to catch a light northerly wind to Land's End and the fishing port of Newlyn, just south of Penzance. We couldn't believe our luck, having another gentle passage through one of the most treacherous and notorious waterways in northern Europe. We galloped [...]

Fair Isle

29 June 2016
We had a bruising up wind motor sailing crossing between Shetland and Fair Isle. Our port engine alarm went off several times, warning us that the batteries were not charging. To add to the difficulty, I was feeling extremely queasy but unable to throw up, so Revle had to take the helm for many hours. This passage took us out of "the screaming sixties", when during the last few weeks we have been north of 60 degrees' latitude. Remarkably, this is north of St Petersburg and the southern part of Greenland. No wonder it is so cold right now in mid-summer.
Eventually enormous cliffs rose out of the mists and the sun shone as we entered the tiny North Haven harbour, greeted by a friendly seal. The cliffs around North Haven are home to a colony of kittiwakes and their intense squawking greeted us. If there is a paradise on earth and this must be it! It would be hard to find a more perfect backdrop for Revle's birthday. I had bought some tiny crayfish tails and fresh Shetland lemon sole for the birthday dinner.
We walked around the island and met some of the locals. One of them spoke to us of the difficulty of the location. Transport to and from the island is entirely weather dependent and the wind is often gale force and the seas ferocious. The maximum temperature ever recorded here is 20.2° C. Like Shetland, the ground is peat underfoot. There is evidence of human occupation for about 5000 years. There are iron age ruins, and more recently the wreck of a German Heinkel plane shot down in 1941. There are sheep everywhere and crofters with small holdings eking out a subsistence living. The lasting impression is of the dramatic and rugged coastline with many types of birds, nesting on every available cliff face, sweeping and soaring and squawking. Many of the visitors to the island are birdwatchers and they come with camouflage, huge telephoto lenses and binoculars. We are not birders but we have certainly learnt a lot about some of the species here. It is fascinating.
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