It’s the 7th of August 2018 and its been an amazing summer! There has been a heatwave for the last 7 weeks in London at least, Harry and Meaghan got married, France won the world cup (sadly, as I was hoping to be in London for when England would win), Wimbeldon was amazing but surely best of all, we found our boat Polaris! Annnddd….. this is the weekend we fly over for the third time to Canet en Roussillion and finally actually take ownership of her.
Rough Plan: Saturday 11th to Wednesday 15th August
On Saturday we will fly from London to Montpellier and jump in our rental car and drive to the hotel. We will spend Sunday shopping for essentials which we have decided not to bring including bed linen, towels, water glasses, wine glasses, cutlery, table-cloth, placemats, frying pan, pots and cooking utensils.
Although, we do need to get the most value out of this trip by bringing as much of the stuff we will need as possible to the boat. The next time we will actually fly to Polaris and have another opportunity to bring stuff with us is likely to be September to the marina south of Barcelona. (See list of what we are bringing at the end).
On Monday we will get on the boat with Alain the broker and run through the snag list of items Catana and the seller have agreed to repair or replace. We have particular concerns about whether or not they will keep their word and find a rib and out-board for us. If not it will be extremely difficult for us to sail Polaris down to Santa Carles marina as planned. As you can imagine, without one, if we want to stop somewhere on the way down for the night, we would need to go into a marina which we would like to avoid where possible to save some cash. Or, drop anchor during our stops but do not get off the boat, which is doable too I guess but we need to ensure we get our tender as agreed!
Following the handover we expect to get sailing with Alain on Tuesday, all being well. He has promised to ‘show us the ropes’ and show us all the boat's most important systems. He will also ensure Jim is confident getting in and out of marinas, using the engine etc.
Our first sail alone!
Depending on the weather and how ready we are and the boat is, we hope to sail Polaris by ourselves on Wednesday or Thursday over the course of three or four days with stops each evening for the night eventually reaching Santa Carles. We are super excited about this challenge. I know to many it sounds a pathetic short distance but this will be our first ever sail on Polaris and for me, it will be third time sailing properly since RYA training in June and our charter holiday in March which was my first ever sailing experience!
I am going to update the second half of this post with what ACTUALLY happened versus the rough plan I have just outlined! It will be interesting to see what crops up that we didn’t foresee!
In the meantime here is a list of stuff we are bringing this time around:
Gear
• Kites, boards
• Snorkel gear
• Swim gear
• Sailing jackets
• Sailing trousers
• Sailing gloves
• Binoculars
• Aeropress coffee maker
• Warm windproof jumpers
• Day Skipper handbook
• VHF handbook
• Logbook
• Imray- Western Med Chart
• Imray-Barcelona to Rhone Chart
• Italian Water’s Pilot Book
• 200,000 miles by Jimmy Cornell
• World voyage planner by Jimmy Cornell
• Cornell’s ocean atlas by Jimmy Cornell
• UK ensign flag
• Irish courtesy flag
• Spanish courtesy flag
• Italian courtesy flag
Camera gear
-Drone
-Go-Pro
-Canon PowerShot G7X
-Big Clunky professional camera- may leave at home.