End of the Journey

You haven’t heard from us in a long time, so I thought I’d explain. As per the last blog we left the boat in Oban over Winter to get some important jobs done. One of these jobs was to try and find the water leak that seemed to be getting worse. Well the yard found it and it’s quite serious!

There are two cracks about 150mm long which go right throught the hull. On the Southerly Owners Forum it seems this has been seen before on older Southerlies and is due to the hull flexing against the solid cast iron grounding plate. It’s probably been there for a year or two but steadily getting worse. The yard we left it in has been useless and we’ve struggled to get them to even open up the inside for the surveyor to inspect. So we’ve decided to abandon the circumnavigation and ship by road to the manufacturer for the repair to be done properly.

We’re sad we can’t complete but John Snr was unable to sail with us anymore so it seems fitting to end here. The ambition was to sail with him to the West of Ireland which we achieved and has left us with some great memories.

Thanks for reading the blog and for those that are interested I will post when we sail again. Thanks for the support and taking the time to read.

Jim, Pat and John Snr

---