CA Site Ring

Our blog has been running since we set sail from the Menai Straits in July 2009, telling the story of preparing Rampage as a liveaboard boat, our travels to Barcelona for our first winter and subsequent wanderings in the Med. 

This is an account of our sailing trip to the Med from the UK. We are on Leg 7 - already exceeding the original 5 year there-and-back plan. 2009 was Plymouth, UK to Portugal via France, Biscay and the Spanish Rias. 2010 it was to Sardinia via Gibraltar, Spain and the Balearics. Next came Sardinia to Corfu via Corsica, Italy, Sicily and Malta. For 2 years we've explored some of Greece, the Ionian, Peloponnese and the Sporades and last year was Turkey. We're back in Greece now to explore the as yet unvisited areas, from Rhodes to Northeast Aegean. The journal is not specifically a sailing "log" as it was originally intended for family & friends to keep tabs on us.

Robinetta is a "Tabloid Cruiser" gaff cutter designed by Denys Rayner and launched in 1937. This is the log of her voyages and documents her history

In 2017, we retired and bought a boat, a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 39i called Ruby Tuesday.

Since then, we have sailed around the UK, crossed the Channel, travelled through the Netherlands on the Staande MastRoute, explored the Frisian Islands, went through the Kiel Canal, did the Danish archipelago, and are now on the German Baltic Coast, heading eastwards.

Our blog is a collection of our experiences, thoughts and ramblings, conversations with people we have met, possible insights and the like on our voyages.

Several solo circumnavigations by Jeanne Socrates on Nereida - four times solo through Southern Ocean, three times solo around Cape Horn

First was west-about through Tropics from west coast of Mexico and back (through Panama Canal), others were east-about through Southern Ocean around Cape Horn.

Last two were solo, nonstop, unassisted:

 2012-13: Guinness World Record for 'oldest female RTW solo nonstop unassisted' (and first woman to circumnavigate solo, nonstop, unassisted from N. America).
2018-19  - on completion, 7th Sept 2019, became oldest person to circumnavigate passing south of all five Great Capes:  C. Horn, C. of Good Hope, C. Leeuwin, SE Cape of Tasmania, S Cape of Stewart Island/New Zealand.

Daily blogs are posted to website when underway.

(Time was spent in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Mexico, recuperating from a bad fall on 28 Sept 2017, just prior to a planned RTW departure.  Returned to Victoria, B.C., Canada in May 2018 to prepare and then succeeded in nonstop unassisted solo RTW from/to Victoria Hbr.)

Plan on return was to repair Nereida over spring/summer 2020 in B.C., so as to get away cruising once more - to California, Mexico, Polynesia, then on through Pacific to NZ & Australia

...............

 January 2022 update:  The 2020 Covid outbreak found me in Australia. A planned four-month 'clockwise circumnavigation by land-yacht', which started February  2020 after flying to Sydney, came to a temporary halt in Yarloop, south of Perth in Western Australia, with lockdown and restricted movement for 3 months, April - June.
Two flight bookings were cancelled (June, August) & it was impossible to get back to Nereida in Victoria Hbr, B.C., to  do repairs as planned, ready for cruising...    There was no 'escape' from Oz during 2020 nor during 2021 and I was granted a new tourist visa valid until 9th August 2021, followed by a second one valid until August 2022. There was no Covid-19 in the general population in Oz for many months, so it was a good place to have been 'trapped', but it was frustrating not to be able to get back to take care of my boat. I was lucky to have friends in Victoria to look after her until two years later when I was able to fly back to Canada fully-vaccinated, thereby being permitted entry!
Australia has been a safe & wonderful place to explore and I visited many amazing places while here - both on my initial camper van tour, having reached Cairns (in Far North Queensland) from West Australia by end August 2020, and then on several trips around Queensland during Oct 2020 and over 2021.   I  was based in a mainly Covid-free Cairns until February 2022 when I head south to Sydney with a flight mid-March.  I had plenty of writing to get done and it was good to be safely based in the warmth of the Tropics, away from the world-wide contagion (& the Northern winter!).

As so many have commented - I could have been stuck in a far worse place!  In much of Australia, life was Covid-free, almost normal in fact, for eighteen months and the people have been very friendly and supportive!

I'm hoping to repair Nereida in Canada over the coming summer months and then get away sailing south sometime in September.  With any luck, the pandemic will be lessening and cruising will be getting back to normal as we head to 2023.....   We'll see!

(4th January 2022, Cairns, QLD, Australia)

The site logs our travels aboard our 2008 Regina 43 deck saloon 'Arkyla'.  As well as providing a technical resource that other (or prospective) Regina owners may find of use, especially with regard to cruising modifications made to the boat, the site also hosts some of my favourite sailing, nature and wildlife photographs captured onboard and on other world travels from the Arctic to Antarctica and the latitudes in between.  I also regularly post cruising-related photographs to the website's sister instagram account @sailingarkyla.

How the first foreign-flagged yacht sailed from the White Sea to the Black Sea through Russia's inland waterways in 2013

My blog is a simple record of Debbie and my travels on Zebahdy.  At present it is all in the Med but maybe we will go further afield as time allows.   It is a combination of text and photos with the occasional video.  If you care going somewhere we have been, you may find useful information on the blog

We are JnS Sailing Options and we hope you enjoy watching our journeys through this world. There have been many and there will be more. In the latest adventure we sail our small yacht The Long Way Down from Yorkshire to the Mediterranean sea, through the inland waterways of France. When we reach the Med, we'll "turn left" and see where Options takes us.

This is an account of a voyage round Britain completed over two years in the authors' Bavaria 43 sloop with an overwinter stop at Fosdyke near Boston.  There were twenty five ports of call and each leg features an account of the passage with weather conditions and the navigational planning involved.