Summary

Early in 2008 I bought a little, old wooden Folkboat called Valmik. I was going to spend a few months on repairs and begin sailing her around Europe, with Australia being the final destination. As my knowledge of boats improved, so did the thoroughness of the restoration. I decided to become very involved in every aspect of construction, doing almost all of the work myself: making my own sails, doing the fit out and all woodwork, splicing my own rig and wiring in the 12 volt electric circuit. Self-reliance, I suppose, is the goal. Follow the link to my photo albums for a detailed documentation of the work and some videos.

For a long time now, I have been striving to achieve my goals and begin an adventure. I had planned to complete a circumnavigation of the UK and Ireland in the summer of 2015 with my wife. Unfortunately, this will not be possible and I went back to work. Valmik is ready to sail, however, and I am finally in a position to start enjoying her for what she was designed for. Of course there is a never ending list of modifications and enhancements with a small section for repairs. I will be sailing as much as possible and documenting my adventures on this blog.

My plan is to build up to a epic solo sailing Adventure.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Sunny Sunday Sailing

Well I really would have liked to have sailed Valmik the 200 nautical miles from the Swale to Devon. Unfortunately I was running out of time before my wedding to do so, and with funds low, transport by roads provided a fixed price. Getting stuck in an expensive marina for weeks was not an appealing option. Plus with my new boat building job in Devon ,I only had my weekends to attempt this.

So Valmik got to see the M26, M25, M4 and the M5 instead.








So she only suffered a slight bit of damage on the way. 

Probably from a pot hole on the road.

Or maybe just a small collision with the support arm on the trailer. 










Then with the fishermen rushing us to launch her we craned her in without any hassle. 

I then had to untie/untangle the rigging for raising the mast.

The crane driver very kindly came back twice to see if we were ready to raise the mast.

It all went up very smoothly. 



So Kate and I got ready for our first little trip to find our allocated mooring buoy for Valmik. Trusty Old Seagull outboard fired up on the second pull. And surprisingly my second outboard started up too quite easily. We motored around to our mooring as it was blowing a hoolie. We chained her to the buoy and I had to rush off to work.

Sunny Sunday Sailing,

We had planned to go for a sail and the weather looked great. I considered sailing off the mooring but the boats are quite jam packed, and I do like to give my outboards a good test every now and then anyway. So they both fired up and we were off. 

So the differences from Torbay to the Swale are huge. Firstly the tidal streams are not very strong in the bay at all. And secondly there is so much deep water and no sand/mud banks to worry about as long as you stay away from the shore.

The wind was quite breezy, I decided we should have a nice calm and slow paced sail. So we reefed Valmik well down. Even with the second reef in the main and a reefed jib we were flying along in the gusts. 

Check out this Video It is not the best ever but sets the scene.

We sailed for a few hours and then headed back into Brixham harbour. I had one outboard in neutral as we came in, but we easily sailed onto our mooring buoy, down wind under jib only.




A beautiful start to Valmiks new sailing waters.







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