Went for a swim today, enough visibility to see down 6.5m to the bottom.Found the anchor, checked the prop and hull, shame it wasn't a little bit warmer 🥶#sailinglife #liveaboard #propeller #snorkeling #nic38 #camperandnicholsons
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The feeling this morning is “I can’t believe we are motoring again… We finished wrapping up all of the previous blog posts this morning, then set out for a sail, to somewhere exciting so that we can get in the water.
A side note here is this means we will aim to write these sail logs as we go, so they might get longer, but also more accurate…
Half an hour in, we are still motoring out to sea with all of the sails up, but not much wind… Don’t worry though, 35 minuites in we turned the motor off managing 2-3 knots. An hour later, we came to a stop and started motoring again. Where is the wind????? Don’t worry, the wind appeared. Once we got fully out of the mouth the wind picked up and we started speed along while Adam was trying to cook the Needle fish from yesterday for lunch! We started to reduce our sail area, first the mizen came down, then we reefed the genoa, and finally started reefing the main, planning on putting 2 reefs in. We got past the first reefing line, but the sail stopped coming down half way to the second reef. What was it stuck on? Looking up we saw one of the sail lugs caught in a feeder line (string) that we have in place to add a second halyard. This meant that we could reef no more, so we raised the sail back to the first reef. After a couple of gybes downwind on a less rocky point of sail Adam headed up the mast in a bosun’s chair to untangle the mess (which ended up being quick and easy). We carried on for the rest of the day with a half reefed Genoa and 1 reef in the main. The fish cooking effort had to be restarted once all of the excitement had died down. The next effort was navigating to our anchorage. We had to change our plan, as we discovered that you need a navigation and anchoring permit for some islands in the area (where we were originally planning on anchoring for the night). Our new target was a beach that looked well protected from the Atlantic swells, but this meant a change of course, and also navigation around the conservation area that we shouldn’t enter without a permit. You can see the conservation area boundary line in red below which we should stay north of. This will take us within 10s of feet of some quite shallow areas, and also take us generally through a shallow area that will be funneling the swell. It’s the closest we have been to the coast, shallows or rocks in a while when actually out sailing, but all went smoothly. We found this anchorage on Navily with a single review, so we could have been heading into anything. Anchoring in around 7-8m, and it was quite windy to start with. We were the only boat around so we ended up putting 40m of chain out. Adam went for a quick adventure under the boat cleaning the waterline on his way. Kathryn prepared some tasty tasty dinner including flat breads from a sour dough starter, and soup for dinner.Starting the sail
Time to reef
Navigating to anchor
At the anchorage
Caught a needlefish last night and filleted it up
It’s meant to have a blueish tint in the flesh, and that is very apparent when taking it out of the fridge this morning
#sailinghannahpenn https://t.co/sSbScF5iFp— Adam Shorland (@addshore)
Jul 29, 2022
Caught a needlefish last night and filleted it up
It’s meant to have a blueish tint in the flesh, and that is very apparent when taking it out of the fridge this morning
#sailinghannahpenn https://t.co/sSbScF5iFp
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🎵🎵
Welcome to the blog
Have a look around
Anything that brain of yours can think of can be found
We’ve got mountains of content
Some better, some worse
If none of it’s of interest to you, you’d be the first
Welcome to the blog
Come and take a seat
Would you like to see the news
Or and any floppy seal feet
There’s no need to panic
This isn’t a test [laughs]
Just nod or shake your head and we’ll do the rest
🎵🎵 — Poor take on a Bo Burnham song
But seriously, welcome to the Hannah Penn blog.
You’ll find our Instagram and Twitter content here when posted, along with some longer-form blog posts of all sailing, some land adventures, and other fun or interesting stuff we get up to. Boat things, posts to the nic 38 owners group and more.
Make sure you head all the way to the first page using the “Older posts” button at the bottom.
Or head to Day 1: The River Dart (splash) to get started. Once there you can use the “Next” or “Previous” buttons at the bottom of the post to follow through.
If you are just interested in fishing, take a look at the #fishing tag linked in the sidebar. Also, find the other main categories there, or just search for stuff.
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Enjoy, and let us know what you think!
Adam & Kathryn
It was a slow start this morning, we tried to leave our anchorage early to make use of the morning sea breeze as there was very little wind forecast, a sea breeze is when the land and the sea are different temperatures, in the mornings the sea is warmer than the land so the cold air is drawn off the land and over the warm sea as that air rises.. well that’s the idea anyway.
The sea breeze sailing didn’t really go to plan so we very slowly sailed down the coast till we lost the wind completely, sadly having to motor for a little while.
Eventually, we got the wind back and were able to pole out the Genoa with the reaching strut to sail directly downwind
We had had the fishing rods out for the whole day again not getting a nibble.. till we had the awkward poled-out sail and then we got a bite! Just our luck!
Adam grabbed the rod whilst I (Kathryn) furled the sail got the engine going and turned so we could bring the fish alongside, ready with the landing net and bucket we brought it closer, excited to see what we had caught!
It came into view but was not the sort of fish we were expecting, we debated letting it go for a moment but decided to give it go and bring it aboard. It turned out to be a 1.3lb Needlefish otherwise called a Garfish which has a greeny blue tint to its flesh.
So with the fish excitement over we were approaching our chosen anchorage, just in time for the wind to pick up and we had a quick beam reach into the bay just as the sun was setting.
But the day wasn’t over yet when I heard a big breath of air right next to the boat, of course, it was dolphins escorting us in! They stayed with us for over 45mins! The pod was quite large with what looked like a number of generations, mum and baby and a very large older-looking one with a white speckled fin and tail. I actually think these were porpoises, not dolphins as they have a much stubbier nose.
Definitely the best end to a very long day of sailing.
As I’m finishing typing up this Adam is filleting the fish… I’m sure you’ll find out tomorrow how we cook it and how good it was when we eat it for lunch tomorrow 😛
Caught our second fish that's bigger than a mackerel today on the way down the coast of Spain.But this one didn't get away! I introduce you to Mr Needlefish, also known as tomorrow's lunch.We had some quite light wind sailing, so filled out the genoa on a down wind leg making use of the reaching strut.#sailinghannahpenn #fishing #needlefish #reachingstrut #sailinglife #sailing #downwind #nic38 #camperandnicholsons #liveaboard #spain #galicia
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Dinner on a boat Day 30…
Pizza again, but with dough not wraps, and with real mozzarella
And yes, it has a face on it!
#sailinghannahpenn #onaboat https://t.co/209HN1JNW3— Adam Shorland (@addshore)
Jul 28, 2022
Dinner on a boat Day 30…
Pizza again, but with dough not wraps, and with real mozzarella
And yes, it has a face on it!
#sailinghannahpenn #onaboat https://t.co/209HN1JNW3
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Throwback Thursday again, here is our maiden voyage with Hannah Penn back in August 2020.Bought in Salcombe, she had to be re-homed to a trot mooring on the River Dart.We waited out a storm in Salcombe for a few days before heading out for the first time.Everything looks lovely and peaceful as we sail head into the Dart.Hannah originally came with a dory (the small boat), but this was quickly sold.#sailinghannahpenn #sailing #nic38 #camperandnicholsons #dartmouth #boat #throwback #throwbackthursday #maidenvoyage
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We are still planning on getting to Porto, Portugal for the 2nd August, so we need to work our way down the Spanish and Portuguese coast, while also finding time to relax, and enjoy some of the coastline, as well as break up the sailing.
We came up with a very detailed plan, as can be seen on the whiteboard to the right.
This plan started off with some more time near A Coruna after the Biscay crossing to relax. Followed by a 60 nautical mile dash around the corner of Spain to get away from some 1.7 to 1.9 meter swell that was meant to be coming in.
So the 26th of July or Day 36 was the day to set off!
We set off around just before noon as the morning was showing very light wind. The sails went up straight out of the anchorage, and we set course on our heading for the first half of the hop.
Fishing jumped to the top of our minds again, and we set up both rods, one looking for mackerel and one looking for bigger fish.
We were quickly successful for mackerel catching one rather swiftly.
The other rod wasn’t having so much fun, there was lots of seaweed and other stuff in the water.
At least we were doing our little bit to clean up the oceans…
We were trying a whole range of different lures on the main line, as we are both fairly new to catching anything other than Mackerel and wanted to work out what was best for fihsing while underway.
We settled on a 10cm jerk bait lure (Read about jerk baits here) which seemed to work quite well at 3-6 knots, not putting to much strain on the line, but also managing to stay at the right depth.
After 5 hours of having the line of having the line out with this lure for the first time something bit! We quickly got to the rod, which was in a rod holder, and started trying to reel whatever was at the end in. We generally prepared for landing our biggest fish yet (not a mackerel), with our landing net etc.
A few minutes passed as we were fighting the fish, occasionally seeing it pop out of the water. It was getting closer and closer to the boat. Unfortunately, when it was about 20 meters back the line became slack, and reeling it in we discovered that the knot attaching the main line to the leader line had either pulled through or snapped.
You can see the reel, with half of the knot still in tack in the image to the right.
Not only did we not land our first big fish, but unfortunateely this fish is probably now stuck with this lure and line.
The wind was lighter than we would have liked, so we lost some time during our sailing compared with our plan. It also dropped off sooner than expected and we had to motor for the last part of this hop.
All of this led to us once again anchoring in the dark, this time around 2am.
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— Adam Shorland (@addshore)
Jul 25, 2022
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