We're off.....

A fridge full of food and a bilge full of beer, we left the Solent with no clear plan.....

Our good friend John Alexander kindly offered to help us sail Nauplios down to the West Country and possibly across the Bay of Biscay if time allowed. 

We then waited in Falmouth for two weeks for the perfect weather opportunity to cross the  very frightening Bay of Biscay. 

Inbetween being glued to every weather report available we explored this most beautiful part of the country and had a very lovely time. 

Unfortunately John had to go back to work before we could cross, but he has left us with two important take home messages which we have used frequently in our sailing lives. 

These are :-

1. Waiting for the right weather is now part of our lives - enjoy waiting for weather, explore the local area, get out and have fun 

2. In John's daytime job, he was used to reading aviation accident reports. One of the things he told us was that many accident reports start off with

"They had all the facts before them, but chose to depart" 

This does sound a bit ridiculous that people would leave knowing the weather is going to be bad, but it happens, and we have nearly left many a time. 

This might be the reasoning   "the weather looks awful now, but it  gets better in a couple of days, we only have this window,  surely it cant be that bad - so shall we just go? "

We do recognise when we are doing this - one of us will probably say - "what would John A say?"  and it knocks us off making silly decsions. 

So to John A - THANKYOU for helping us with the sailing, and thankyou for your words of wisdom!