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Engine out

Engine seized! Sailing in paradise…

Apart from the deep joy of discovering that our engine has seized, it feels like some kind of nautical episode of ‘Back to the Future’ here on SY Esper

Our regular Sailing Log Diary on YouTube–which out of necessity runs a few months behind real time–shows Jamie sailing alone in Thailand with Liz back in the UK looking after her ailing mum. And yet, right now, Liz has just returned from her >second visit home to tend to Dottie while Jamie has been solo-sailing in Thailand.

In the words of Shirley Bassey and the Propellerheads , “…it’s all just a little bit of history repeating…”

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A Deafening Silence

One of the highlights for me was being dropped off in the middle of Wadi Rum and walking through a ‘ravine’. Khaled drove off and met us at the other side a few kilometres away. Walking through this ravine I came across a piece of perfectly preserved, albeit completely bleached, coral. At that point I could imagine Wadi Rum as a sea, with us walking on the bed.

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A Special Birthday Video Clip

I know some of you simply don’t have the time or the energy to read all our stories, so as a special birthday treat I’ve pulled out all the stops and created an exclusive animated version of Liz’s tale, ‘Murder on the Kolkata Express’. Some of you may have read this brilliant short story already but wait till you get a load of this, this is quite unique. It’s a lot of fun too.

Happy birthday, Liz!

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Storm Brewing Over Cochin

It’s a bit early but the storms have started brewing over Cochin. I remember two years ago sailing from Goa to Cochin having to motor straight through some nasty weather and seeing lightning like you see in this video clip.

Around the one minute mark you’ll see it’s just like someone turning the kitchen light on and off. It feels like monsoon is just around the corner.

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Freeing Up Our Pacific Plus Wind Pilot Self Steering

One of the problems with not winterising your self-steering gear properly is that 18 months down the line you pay for it. When we started recommissioning Esper at the beginning of the year we were horrified to discover that our Pacific Plus self-steering gear would not budge. Worse still, I had turned the auxiliary rudder round so that it was pointing inwards and therefore made the brass gears inaccessible. Here is a video to the solution.

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Video Clip Of My Girlfriend Stripping

Judging by the positive response from the last video clip we thought we’d post up another one for your titillation. It seems you lot like instant gratification so for those of you who can’t be bothered to read our more exciting written and photographic blog entries, here’s another clip for you to download and savour. It’s a clip of the Lovely Liz stripping! Better watch it quick before she finds out…

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A Messy New Year!

Why haven’t you heard from us recently? Indeed we could ask why we haven’t heard from you too! Well, here’s our excuse:

Having made the decision to get off our asses and go for a sail, which will be our first in TWO YEARS (!), we are having to work our way through a stupid amount of jobs that should have been done before now. What with our land-based travels poor old Esper has been neglected somewhat, so now it’s time to attend to her needs and get cracking with those all important boat maintenance jobs.

I’m not going to bore you with a list of these jobs but I will entertain you with a quick guided tour of Esper and what she looks like after her guts have been ripped open. For those with no idea about living on a boat this is a little insight into what we get up to when preparing a boat for a sail.

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Turkey to India Video: A Geography Lesson For Kids

We have put together this educational video for children aged between 5-10 but at 50 Liz was just as entertained, so we hope everyone gets something out of it.

Using Google Earth we have animated the course that we took on the rally from Turkey to India. It starts off with a few clips of the rally boats to give children an idea of what a boat looks like when it is sailing but the main part of this clip is an explanation of each country visited and where they are in relation to the UK.

We put this together to accompany the podcast we’ll be publishing in October for Nancy Lake’s class at Wybunbury Delves Primary School. Nancy’s class, who have asked us a whole range of questions about what it’s like to live on a boat, is aged between 10-11 but the commentary on this video clip is more suited to 4-7 year olds.

We hope you enjoy it. It was great fun to put together and we look forward to reading your comments.

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First Tinker To Sail The Red Sea?

This last week has been dramatic to say the least. You’ll find out more in the coming weeks when the podcasts and photographs of our progress are published. Bear in mind we now have to be mindful of what we make public knowledge and what we hold back, so there will be a delay in what we report on. In the meantime we’ve been sitting out some nasty southerlies in this safe little anchorage and yesterday we had some fun. Our tender, which is a British-built Tinker, doubles up as a sailing dinghy so Cillian of ‘Cobble’ and myself put a bit of effort into rigging her up and taking her for her maiden sail! Is this the first ever Tinker to sail in the Red Sea? Maybe, maybe not, but what is impressive is that I’ve successfully managed to upload a video clip of said maiden voyage. Listen out for the gay Egyptian soundtrack!

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