Round Britain for the RNLI Blog

What a fantastic afternoon. Our good friends Anne and Paul took me out on their boat and we set off to meet Paul as he neared Plymouth. We met in the middle of Bigbury Bay for an emotional first sighting of our little boat that has carried Paul so safely such a long way. The engines never missed a beat either. I hadn’t seen the boat since May although I’d seen Paul of course about 3 weeks ago, and I’d forgotten just how little she is and how faithfully she has brought Paul full circle back to Plymouth.

The Plymouth lifeboat came out to meet him and escorted him back to their berth in Millbay Marina. Paul popped a bottle of bubbly and a few stories were swapped before I joined Paul on Stargate for the trip up the Cattewater to our dry berth at Yacht Haven Quay.

Paul and Anne then joined us for a pub meal, which was excellent, and then I drove Paul home. He fell asleep on the sofa he was so tired, but managed to get upstairs to bed (he’s not used to that!).

I still haven’t finished the window sill but I will. New front door today though. It’s been an amazing 63 days, during which I feel as if I have been as close to Paul’s experience as I could without actually being there. I am so proud of what Paul has achieved, in a tiny boat, on his own, with no permanent support team (although he received wonderful support from sponsors and supporters), and, as we discussed last night, with no autohelm or auto steering of any kind. He drove the boat himself every inch of the way.

I arrived back in Plymouth yesterday afternoon at 5pm after a 63 day trip… exactly, to the day, the planned time! That is spooky!

I haven’t yet put up the trip log for Lowestoft to Eastbourne nor for the final leg to Plymouth but I will do so in the next day to two but there are a few things I must get out of the way first… sorry. Also there are more photos to go up.

Things on the task list for the coming weeks include:

• write an article for Motor Boats Monthly
• I realise that the photos have been difficult to follow as there are no captions so I am going to annotate all the photos and include some of them in the blog entries. That will take a while!
• The engines now need a service so I have to organise that
• Many items were bought especially for this trip and so I now need to sell those… e.g. charts
• I am still fundraising so I need to look at ways of continuing to generate income for the RNLI onwards from here
• I would like to write a book but at the moment I am unsure what form it will take. I have in mind returning to the places I stopped at but by road to properly investigate each place from the boating, seafaring, RNLI perspective… these are just ideas at the moment so nothing decided yet

But first, after I have tidied up the boat and done the final trip logs I am taking a week out with Sally to try to return to normality again.