On Sunday we were sailing with hundreds of other boats on the Solent. Our destination was Buckler’s Hard marina on the inviting Beaulieu river. The sailing turned out to be a good practise on COLREGS navigational rules because there were
From the Isle of Wight we continued towards the river Hamble that is also located on the Solent area. We could clearly see that the Solent is the Mecca of sailors in the UK. We could easily spot more than
Silky smooth seas continued on our English Channel crossing from Cherbourg to the Isle of Wight. When I was tying the last knot to the rope of the British courtesy flag when skipper’s head appeared up to the deck and
After visiting small idyllic Honfleur we were on the way to a much bigger Cherbourg. The marina in Cherbourg has 1500 berths. On this 76 nautical mile voyage the logbook got two significant entries. At first Suwena passed the Greenwich
On the way from Dieppe to Honfleur we again deployed the gennaker because of the light northerly winds. We rigged already a familiar adjustable tack line and the trimming of the sail worked great. We had found an excellent gennaker
On the way from Calais to Dieppe we heard a startling warning on VHF because there were swimmers crossing the English Channel. They notified coordinates for each swimmer and his escort boat. This way the ships can avoid swimmers. The
The gennaker is definitely our favourite sail. During the sailing in France on the coast of Normandy from Calais to Dieppe we had a perfect gennaker weather for 82 miles. Onboard Suwena we have a North Sails G3 gennaker with
When reading other’s sailing blogs Calais has always felt a distant city by looking at the end of the Baltic Sea. It really felt like an achievement by arriving on own boat to the harbour of Calais. At the same
From Bruges it was first nine miles on the canals to the North Sea. After passing the port of Zeebrugge we raised the sails and it was another nine miles until we were in front of Oostende entrance. Still one
We arrived from Rotterdam to Zeebrugge at nine o’clock in the evening. On arrival we were informed that the next upstream lockage will be at 23:30 and again our plans changed. We stayed in Zeebrugge for the night. We were
