26th to 29th July 2022 We stayed a couple of nights in Chatham - the first time this month when we'd spent more than one night in the...

17th to 25th July 2022 It's been a little over a week since we embarked on the final leg of the Two Summers circumnavigation of Britain....

Cornwall, Devon and Dorset, 25th June to 1st July 2022 In Falmouth On Saturday an old acquaintance came into Falmouth: the Scillonian...

24th to 25th June 2022 When we woke, the sea and the sky had both lost their fabulous blue colour, and it was a grey windy morning, with...

22nd to 23rd June 2022 The Isles of Scilly are a group of islands, islets and rocks about 25 miles west of Land's End. Five of the...

Kilmore Quay to Scilly, 21st - 22nd June 2022 It was 21st June, the day of the Summer Solstice. Midsummer is a bit of a misnomer, as it's...

19th to 20th June 2022 On 18th June I flew back to Dublin. The flight was delayed by nearly two hours, and when I emerged at the other...

27 May 2022 Not really a blog post, just some snaps from a sunny day in Dublin.

25th - 26th May 2022 Goldfinch's logbook, in which we record key navigational events for each passage, has a heading at the top of each...

22nd to 24th May 2022 Our plan was to head to Carlingford Lough, which is a beautiful inlet marking the border between Northern Ireland...

19 - 21 May 2022 The passage from Bangor to Peel on the Isle of Man is about the same distance as that awful stretch from Campbeltown to...

18th May 2022 From Bangor it is an easy train ride into Belfast. We got off the train at the Titanic Quarter, from where it was a...

After about eight months of waiting, the second half of my two-summer circumnavigation of Britain has finally begun. Early in September...

Towards the end of August Jo and I took the sleeper train from Euston to Fort William and then another train to Mallaig. Goldfinch was...

After a 3 week gap I'm back on the west coast of Scotland about to complete the last stint of this summer's sailing. And I've realised I...

In Tarbert we planned to meet up with Jo, who had travelled up the length of the Western Isles by a combination of ferry and bike. We had...

We planned to leave Stornoway at about half past ten, having spent two nights there. Because we’d done so much of our recent passages...

On a misty, almost windless morning, we left Kinlochbervie and headed away from the mainland towards the Western Isles. At the start we...

When we left Goldfinch in Kirkwall at the end of last month it was blowing a gale and raining a very wet Orkney rain. When we returned to...

20th to 23rd June 2021 About midday we left Stromness. As we headed out through Hoy Sound a gentle wind persuaded us that we would be...