A quick check back through the blog suggests in has been a year since my last post and a phenomenal SEVEN YEARS since I started this hair-brained project. The boat is still out the water, albeit hundreds of miles from its first home in Rye, but looks very very different from where we first started. The last year has been a bit of a non-starter – pandemic anyone? Combined with crew member two and a lot of false starts with moorings.

Moorings remain the single trickiest most frustrating piece of the puzzle. For a boat this size, they are elusive and, while there are definitely more options in Suffolk than Rye, there is still a limit to how far we can go. The chap who whisked us effortlessly up to Ipswich has sold his lorry and many of the distances which seem close by as the crow flies, are a Herculean effort if towed round the coast. So while it seems like little has been happening, there have been monthly trawls of google maps for anywhere that looks like it might berth the boat and phone calls to boatyard after boatyard.

Persistence has paid off and we are thrilled to have a pretty much perfect spot for her. Launch date is planned for 5 October and I for one never thought that I would be saying that. The original unhelpful shot blasting chap who said that the project would never be finished was wrong! It might have taken seven years but it has finally come off. A big pat on the back to all involved.