53ac5a2e

Ireland and the Scillies

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 17:35:10 GMT

Great cities and small islands

Our first stop after Scotland was Carrickfergus near Belfast. The weather was great and we had a lovely day playing golf with Jager. The next day we went to visit the city together. In the morning we visited the Titanic museum which was very impressive! Even more impressive though, was the bus tour we took in the afternoon past all the history sites of The Troubles. Very frightening to see how the walls and gates were still there, and you could almost still feel the tension there. Even more so, when we accidentally found ourselves in the middle of an Orange march in Carrickfergus the next day! A day of motoring without any wind, and we were in Dublin. Here, Jager took their granddaughter on board and we spent a day visiting the city.

We had a night stopover in Arklow on the river, and then it was on to the Scillies! Again there was not much wind and motoring, but there were many dolphins on the way playing with the bow and the wake.

On the Scillies our three boats spent 2 days on a mooring between Tresco and Bryher, a lovely place with a view of the castle ruin and the entire ocean. We said goodbye to the Bosse crew who were moving on to the English coast, and with Jager moved to st Marys to play golf on the gorgeous course with a view of all the Scilly islands. We made one more stop in Falmouth together with Jager, and then is was time to say goodbye to them after two months of sailing together...

Locks and Lochs (and malts)

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 17:02:18 GMT

Caledonian Canal and Whisky coast

We chose the Caledonian Canal to avoid strong westerly winds in the north. The canal has 27 locks (!) often in steps where you go from one lock into the next one. With Bosse en Jager, our 3 boats fit exactly in one lock together, so we quickly got into the system! Part of the canal is Loch Ness but no monsters were found. The scenery is amazing, although unfortunately it was still pretty cold, around 5-10 degrees. We spent the night halfway through, at Fort Augusta. When you leave the canal, there is a great view of Ben Nevis! Our first stop on the west coast was Oban, where we had our first distillery tour and whisky tasting- more would follow...

From Oban, we had a short trip to Tobermory with the colourful houses. With the Bosse and Jager crew, we took a Puffin tour, getting really close up to the large colony on Lunga Island, and visiting the rock formations on Staffa Island. We then sailed on between the islands where you have to really calculate the tides with sometimes over 6 knots of current and "boiling" waters.. we passed one of those spots in dense fog which was very spooky. On Islay, we rented a car with the Jager crew and drove around the island, visiting more distilleries and eating lots of seafood. After a stop in Campbeltown, it was sadly time to leave Scotland behind and sail to Ireland. With all the beautiful places we saw and so much more still to see, we will certainly come back one way or another!

SCOTLAND

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 15:39:10 GMT

First leg! Hindeloopen to Inverness

After a very sunny and slightly emotional farewell party at the Sailor's Inn in Hindeloopen, we left our home port on the 2nd of May for Terschelling, to the sound of ships horns from all our friends as we sailed away! On the trip to Terschelling we were joined by Jager and Bosse, who will sail around the British Isles with us, and also Yulunga and Taika who came along to Terschelling. Waiting out the weather for another day, Jacky Explorer and crew left Dutch waters on the 4th of May for the round the world trip! We had a rather uneventful (lots of motoring) crossing towards Hartlepool, but once we closer to the English coast the wind freshened to a force 6 which made for an interesting/scary entry into the rather tight harbour locks. We stayed in Hartlepool for a few days while Jager's crew reunited with the fishermen they had rescued from their liferaft a few years earlier. We had a great time with Phil and Tracy Walsh and got a very interesting insight in the fishing business!

Our next stop was Eyemouth which is a lovely small harbour, but unfortunately every single pontoon berth was occupied by catamarans servicing the wind farms, so we had to tie up to the quay wall for a few days. the wind really picked up which left us in Eyemouth for a week, which was no problem as we spent the time playing golf with Jager on the spectacular course on top of the cliffs and also took a daytrip bij train to Edinburgh.

After Eyemouth, we had some great sailing along the coast with stopovers in Aberdeen in the commercial port and Buckie in the fishing harbour- no marinas in this part of Scotland, with Peterhead out of business during to storm damage! The weather being unstable, Jager, Bosse and us decided to use the Caledonian canal to get to the West Coast.