Hello all
I have been lurking around this group since I bought my Vega last
October from a
lovely gent called Peter Humphries in the UK. Since then, she has
been on the hard in
Southwold, Suffolk, and I have been working in sunny Barcelona where
I live. And
how I hate long distance relationships
Fortunately, we are to be reunited mid-March when I will fly back to
the UK, spend a
month de-winterising her and giving her a bit of a spring clean and
then spend 3 or 4
days taking her down the coast and across the channel to France.
There I will be
joined by my wife and labrador and Vegabond will get her shake down
cruise:
through the French canals to Marseille; eastward to the French
Riviera; across to
Corsica and Northern Sardinia; a crossing to the Balearics and back
to Barcelona to
her berth for next winter. Plans after that start to get a little
sketchy but the vague
idea is to toughen up the boat during that winter and leg it to
Turkey and Greece. We
shall see.
We have spent the last two years organising our finances/ lives so
that we can run
away for as long as we want to. We will have to work along the way,
but I am lucky
enough to be able to work out of a laptop, and Hannah's an artist so
we can rent out
our flat and generate enough cash on the hoof to live well although
on a tight budget.
As we are stepping off the grid for a while, it is only right and
proper that we stay in
contact with those we know and love so we have set up a website:
http://www.vega1030.co.uk
But it has a secondary function: to offer information obout cruising
on a (very) limited
budget; to show what equipment is really necessary, and what is just
pushed on you
by the glossy magazines; and, hopefully, to show that it is possible
to follow a dream
on a small budget by learning skills instead of paying someone else
to do something
that you could do for yourself and by setting off on a small boat.
None of this is new for sure. The Pardeys immediately come to mind as
does Annie
Hill but both built their own boats. This project is more along the
lines of James
Baldwin on Atom (which, although not a Vega, is well worth the read)
with a bit of
Glissando thrown in:
Atom Voyages - Home
Pearson Triton #381 Glissando | Restoring, Maintaining, and Cruising a Plastic Classic on the Coast of Maine
(Note:- Funny how these are both Pearson Tritons - maybe I'm just
trying to level the
score for the good old Vega
I would really appreciate any feedback on the site - good or bad.
I also have a question: the Vega has earned its reputation as a solid
and capable
offshore cruiser and it has the requisite small cockpit, but don't
those coamings just
render the small cockpit null and void? It looks as though you could
fill the cockpit to
the top of the coamings which would take the water level up to the
second
hatchboard? What have people done about this when going offshore - or
am i missing
something here?
okay, you can all wake up now, i've stopped waffling
thanks to you all who make this such a fantastic corner of cyberspace
adam
I have been lurking around this group since I bought my Vega last
October from a
lovely gent called Peter Humphries in the UK. Since then, she has
been on the hard in
Southwold, Suffolk, and I have been working in sunny Barcelona where
I live. And
how I hate long distance relationships
Fortunately, we are to be reunited mid-March when I will fly back to
the UK, spend a
month de-winterising her and giving her a bit of a spring clean and
then spend 3 or 4
days taking her down the coast and across the channel to France.
There I will be
joined by my wife and labrador and Vegabond will get her shake down
cruise:
through the French canals to Marseille; eastward to the French
Riviera; across to
Corsica and Northern Sardinia; a crossing to the Balearics and back
to Barcelona to
her berth for next winter. Plans after that start to get a little
sketchy but the vague
idea is to toughen up the boat during that winter and leg it to
Turkey and Greece. We
shall see.
We have spent the last two years organising our finances/ lives so
that we can run
away for as long as we want to. We will have to work along the way,
but I am lucky
enough to be able to work out of a laptop, and Hannah's an artist so
we can rent out
our flat and generate enough cash on the hoof to live well although
on a tight budget.
As we are stepping off the grid for a while, it is only right and
proper that we stay in
contact with those we know and love so we have set up a website:
http://www.vega1030.co.uk
But it has a secondary function: to offer information obout cruising
on a (very) limited
budget; to show what equipment is really necessary, and what is just
pushed on you
by the glossy magazines; and, hopefully, to show that it is possible
to follow a dream
on a small budget by learning skills instead of paying someone else
to do something
that you could do for yourself and by setting off on a small boat.
None of this is new for sure. The Pardeys immediately come to mind as
does Annie
Hill but both built their own boats. This project is more along the
lines of James
Baldwin on Atom (which, although not a Vega, is well worth the read)
with a bit of
Glissando thrown in:
Atom Voyages - Home
Pearson Triton #381 Glissando | Restoring, Maintaining, and Cruising a Plastic Classic on the Coast of Maine
(Note:- Funny how these are both Pearson Tritons - maybe I'm just
trying to level the
score for the good old Vega
I would really appreciate any feedback on the site - good or bad.
I also have a question: the Vega has earned its reputation as a solid
and capable
offshore cruiser and it has the requisite small cockpit, but don't
those coamings just
render the small cockpit null and void? It looks as though you could
fill the cockpit to
the top of the coamings which would take the water level up to the
second
hatchboard? What have people done about this when going offshore - or
am i missing
something here?
okay, you can all wake up now, i've stopped waffling
thanks to you all who make this such a fantastic corner of cyberspace
adam