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After more than three years of hard refit work on our Beecham Searider 45 Formanda, we deemed her ready for a first cross-Channel adventure, with a passage to Cherbourg via an overnight anchorage in Shanklin where we had our first encouter with pistol shrimp. Continue reading Formanda: Cherbourg via Shanklin 
As I write the wind is blowing around 33-40 knots more or less onto the aft end of the boat and we’re watching rainwater being bullied in troubled furrows uphill along the reverse sheer of Formanda’s decks. A good time to be sat alongside a bit of wood with several bits of string secured to it. Continue reading Gale break 
The woodwork surrounding Formanda’s Blue Sea shorepower panel has been completed. It’s not perfect, but it brings a smile every time I see it. Continue reading Formanda gets some finesse Just once in a while it’s fun to celebrate something for no great reason. In this case an image I first took on 35mm transparency film on the River Seine from the deck of our Pedro 33 Solano Incalzando, sometime in the mid 1990s. From memory the specifics were a dawn departure downstream from Rouen, to ensure we took the travelator of a tide that flows with gusto on the tidal river Seine. In the image you can just see the hints of mist, but not long before or afterward tendrils of thick fog were curling over the rails and knitting themselves into a blanket to obscure even the bankside, just a few scant metres away. It was technically illegal for a leisure boat to proceed in such circumstances, given the commercial traffic on the river, but on 70-odd miles from Rouen to the sea there are few if any places suitable for pulling over and tying up, even on a steel motorboat. And so we put the radar on and spent a concentrated hour or so until the sun got going and broke through. Continue reading In Seine moments in France 
I have to say that it has always felt that something was missing. And then I realised what it was. In all of the time we have been busy rebuilding Formanda, our Beecham Searider 45, the ensign was tucked away in one of a myriad number of boxes and the staff socket was removed from the rail. Well, all of that is in the past now. Continue reading (En)sign of progress What a difference a good customer experience can make. I’ve often said you can eat an average meal at a restaurant accompanied by well-judged attention from the staff and it will far outweigh Michelin-standard fare accompanied by care-less or haughty delivery. It’s also a well-known fact that faulty goods put right by service above expectation will engender greater customer loyalty than a product that works right out of the box. So what prompts this blog? Well we’ve been buying rather too much kit for our boat over the past few months and the experiences have often been polarised between extremely good and disappointingly poor. Continue reading Marine customer service heroes and zeroes Synoptic charts and wave swell charts for the Atlantic and UK can be obtained by email Continue reading Surface pressure synoptic charts and swell charts by email Olympic exploits on the water 100 years ago belonged to the powerboat brigade Continue reading Motor boating at the Olympics Ship visibly bending in heavy weather Continue reading Container ship feeling the force |
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