Canal knowledge

When you cast off your lines with the idea that you will be gone for, oh say, seven or eight years, having a plan becomes a bit moot. No one can make a cruising plan that will survive eight years.

So we didn’t. Our plan was simple; 'We have no plan and by golly, we are going to stick to it!' What we did know was that we wanted to start our journey by crossing the North Sea to Scotland.

Scotland, we’d been told was simply superb.

Having been up and down the English Channel a couple of times, that particular stretch of water held no attraction. Neither did the standing mast route in the Netherlands since we had lived there for seven years. Scotland, on the other hand, holds many secrets and secluded bays just waiting for visiting cruisers to explore.

So, Scotland it was and one early morning in June 2016, Vinni and I sailed out of Thyboron on our first ocean passage. Looking back, we would not call a three day run a passage, but when you are first starting out, three days at sea (especially the North Sea) is a scary proposition. We were nervous and not a