Hopefully the first of a number of posts that will show our progress around the UK under sail in ‘Nellinui’ – assuming I can wrestle the technology into submission.

But first…. the boat. If you have a look at some other stuff on the website, you will see that she is entirely home-built. A catamaran of 10m length, 6m beam, definitely intended as a comfortable cruiser, although fitted with a rotating mast. She has now been in the water for 5 years, so should stay afloat…

The really cold spring has hampered preparations, along with my stupid idea to get all the obligations to others out of the way before doing the real prep on the boat. The result? Last minute panics and setting out with more of a construction project than a boat! (Actually that’s an exaggeration – most of the boat functions just fine. We have simply replaced the not-very-successful front walkway with a new solid anchor tray and installed some davits with a solar panel mounted on top. Still, there are some bolts still to fit and bits of rubber flooring for the anchor box to do…)

At some point you have to decide to start, and as we have some light winds coming up this weekend, now seems like the right moment. So tomorrow it is…. Here we go – about a couple of thousand miles, 4 months (two of which in the Hebrides), through the Caledonian Canal and back via London (?) and the South Coast.

Crew is Andy Bartram, who helped build the boat with me. He sort of comes with the boat these days, and this trip is a big ambition for him as well. Various friends, and of course Alison my wife and Helen my daughter will be joining us for stages along the way.

I’ve got a GoPro lookalike camera which we will strap to things occasionally, and with luck will be able to post some pictures of the adventure along with these musings, as I am sure you would prefer to see the pics than read a description of us being sucked down by Corryvreckan!