We suddenly realised there are no Carina techy details on our www, so ..........

CARINA  OF WIGHT

Port of Registry : Southampton . Lloyds Registered

Builder : Moody  UK  

Built : 1985   Class : Grenadier  134

Only 10 built – It took 9 months as they were hand built – Carina was the last one.

Type: Cutter Rig Sailing Yacht. 

Full Batten Mainsail

130 % Genoa .  

Staysail.    

Trysail.    

Cruising Chute.                

Tonnage: 24.64 Tonnes      

Hull : GRP  

Decks : Teak        

Length: 44 ft / 13.4 m    [ 50 ft / 15.25 m including Davits ]

Beam: 13.6 ft / 4.1 m                     

Mast Height : 62 ft / 19m

Draft: 7ft / 2.13 m                         ¾  Length Steel /Lead Keel

Engine : Perkins 120 hp  [ Top Speed 8 Knots @ 2000 rpm]

Fuel : Diesel  700 Ltrs  [1000 nm approx]      

Water : 725 Ltrs

 Average Sailing Speed:  6 knots .

Top Speed [so far] 10 Knots

Centre cockpit .    

 3 Cabins .     

2 Heads  [ Toilets / Shwrs]   

12v,24v and 240volt Electrics .               

Diesel  Generator.

Wind Generator              [ Regretably no Solar Power yet] 

Water maker .         

Fridge .          

Freezer .         

Diesel  Heating.

Regretably no Dishwasher, Washing Machine or Tumble Drier

but very thankfully no TV.

 

Radar.

Chart plotter.

SSB.

Navtex.

VHF.

Inmarsat .

EPIRB.

6 person Liferaft, 6 person Dinghy , 2 hp & 20 hp outboards

More spares than your average yacht chandler, More schoolbooks than your average library and more food and alcohol than your average Tesco !!

 

For the Sauna , Solarium or Swimming Pool - just step outside !!

 

 

 

 

The last 6 months have already been quite a journey – and we haven’t even hoisted the sails yet!

For many years we have had a dream of wanting warm weather for longer than just a holiday in the sun, of long term sailing to many places and of taking the children on a true adventure.

Realising we had a window of only 2 years until Amber needed to be back at school for her GCSE’s in September 09, there was no time to lose! Every month spent planning was one less on our trip.

 

Key factors needed to be in place to make it happen: How would the children feel about it, where would we go, which yacht would suit our needs, schooling, renting our house, someone to run our property business, holiday homes for our pets, what the children’s schools would say and could we afford to do it?

 

 Whenever we’d considered doing something like this in the past, there were always major stumbling blocks and our idea had to be shelved for later ( but when is ‘later’ anyway ? )

 

We knew this time we must take this opportunity of a lifetime within the lifetime of the opportunity!

 

This time there were no stumbling blocks. With a thumbs up from Amber and Tom, fantastic support from the schools, our families and friends, Tania taking on our business (and our cat, Filly!), my parents taking on our goats (- though the goats seem to have other ideas!)  John and Lesley renting Rosemount and, with a bit of luck thrown in and a huge amount of research and late nights, oh! and finding Yacht Carina, everything fell into place!!

 

Our fab friends Christine and Mike threw a surprise drinks party (read 6 hours!!) for us with 40 or so of our best friends a few days earlier – what a send off, it was wonderful!  (What a hangover!!)

 

The day we left Rosemount and drove down to live aboard Carina was quite surreal – we’d thought about it all for so long and worked so hard to put everything in place , we couldn’t believe that we were finally fulfilling our dream .

 

 

We had moved out of Rosemount in the morning

( “just one more cupboard to empty “– it felt never ending!)

 We arrived at Northney Marina just in time to load the last car load of kit / food and essentials (?!) onto Carina before she was launched. Amber and Tom became dab hands at this - using the davits (normally used to raise and lower the dinghy into the water) they hauled everything onboard using big blue Tesco bags! Very inventive I thought!  (Thank you Mr.Tesco.)

So by 5.0 pm our new home was afloat – we drank champagne from tooth mugs (all we could find from the chaos below decks!)

I always think boats never seem alive until they are afloat so, as we had never seen her in the water, it was a very special moment as we all stepped aboard for the first time on 26th March.

The next 2 weeks were spent packing away our kit and doing lots of jobs that should have been finished earlier. We surprised Tom on his birthday with Granny and Aunty Caroline arriving as our first visitors to Carina .When we all arrived at HMS Victory we made Tom wear his hoody back to front so he couldn’t see until his 3 best friends and their families (who had come down for the day as a surprise) were standing in front of him. He was so shocked when we took off his hood, all he could say was “oh....hello” !! The boys were all so excited, it was lovely to watch.

Victory was fascinating for us all .Fish and chips on the quayside got the vote then everyone came back to see our new home for the next 16 months.

Thanks for coming down, guys!

We went on a Sea Survival Course for the day – a really great idea that was! They made us jump in a blacked out swimming pool in full wet weather gear whilst spraying us with cold water then to climb into a life raft!

It was, in fact, a really useful and challenging day, Amber and Tom did so well and came away with certificates to prove it (they had never had children that young there before.)

 

We got Carina looking pretty smart in time for our Bon Voyage Bash – what a weekend that was!!

Our families and friends came from all over the place to help us celebrate getting this far ...(Northney Marina - and no departure date precisely set!) 

The rain didn’t stop the party – we just carried on below decks – 40 people! (I reckon it’s got to be a record on a Moody 44) Everyone spoilt us – arriving with wonderful food and some amazingly thoughtful presents and cards, not to mention large quantities of champagne and children! We must have had 100 visitors over the weekend– some of them came back on Sunday when we celebrated 6 birthdays James,Louise,Luke,Pete,Richard and Mike ( in no particular order !) with French chocolate cake (and more champagne of course!) 

 The invite read “Saturday 12th 12.0 onwards”.....our last guests left Monday lunchtime......it was fantastic, I was lost for words to have such fantastic support from everyone - we are so lucky to have such great families and friends, we love you all!

 

Our favourite entry in our visitor’s book sums it up beautifully

VON BOYAGE CATS ON RARINA

Pay you have mlenty of sind in your wails, line in your wocker, dun on the secks and no gain or no rails, no lunder or thightening and above all a jantastic fourney. Tith wove and west bishes

Ve Tee and Filly

P.S It only 10.35 and I peare we’re not swissed!!

 

Now the rush is on to be ready to set sail, we are starting some school with the children – halted yesterday by having to rescue Tom’s scooter from the bottom of the marina with the dinghy, 2 sea magnets and a boat hook ! A challenge in itself!