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It was now 2013, and our search for the perfect cruising sailboat, our “dream boat”, continued. We visited Düsseldorf again in January, mostly because Hallberg-Rassy had suddenly replaced the 54 with a brand-new 55. We had to see it and compare the old 54 with the new 55. We also wanted to check out a Solaris, as one of our “classmates” from the offshore theory course had just bought a Solaris 48 which he keeps in Genoa, Italy, and he absolutely raved about it.
We were well-received at the Solaris stand, and they are indeed beautifully-crafted boats. But we could tell right away that we were not going to buy one. A Solaris is a great Mediterranean or perhaps Caribbean cruising yacht, but the boat and especially the huge aft cockpit did not install a feeling of security in our minds. We intend to start our cruising life in Scandinavia and northern Europe and then perhaps Iceland, Greenland and Canada – places where the water temperature rarely rises above 18°C – places where you want to stay put on the boat. The wide and roomy saloon did not offer much in terms of handholds and bracing needed if going through a rough sea, but it did provide great entertainment space for a Mediterranean-style dinner party.
So on we went to our appointment at the Hallberg-Rassy stand.
The new H-R 55 was not very different from the 54. The greatest difference was the addition of two port lights on each side of the hull in the saloon area. The upside was more light in the saloon and a tiny bit of view. The downside was that it took away quite a bit of storage (removal of cupboards on each side of the saloon). We weren’t sure if the change was a good thing. Storage is, after all, something you never have enough of on a boat.
We discussed what options we wanted/needed, such as the double bed configuration in the owner’s cabin instead of the standard twin beds separated by a little seat in the middle. There were four or five pages of options to go through. Dishwasher? No. Washing machine? Yes. Microwave? Yes. Television? No. Double bed instead of the standard bunk beds? No. Shoal keel? Yes. And so on… An hour later, we felt we were almost ready to order the boat! We left the H-R booth with an appointment to visit the yard at the end of August in conjunction with the Open Yard boat show there.
One of the absolute highlights of the 2013 Düsseldorf show was meeting someone who was to become a friend, coach and a big influence on the construction of our boat, Freja. This person was Leon Schultz.
Leon onboard his Hallberg-Rassy 46 “Regina Laska”
Leon was in Düsseldorf to promote his book The Missing Centimetre (recently re-named to Sabbatical at Sea), which I had bought and read a few months earlier. We met standing in a cash register queue! I immediately recognised him from all of the photos in the book and we had a short but lively conversation about life after quitting everything to go cruising. He proved to be just as kind, open and insightful as he seemed to be in the book.
Leon found it impossible to go back to the “office life” after his one-year cruising sabbatical, and was at this point (early 2013) providing cruising/sailing training on his new boat, Regina Laska, a Hallberg-Rassy 46. We thought it would be a good idea to do some sailing with a private coach, so we took his business card, fully intending to get in touch in a year or so.
We left Düsseldorf with the H-R 55 in our sights. We received an offer, detailing all the options we discussed, a couple of weeks after the show. But after seeing what Leon had done with Regina Laska (a total refit of an older boat), we started to entertain thoughts of doing the same. What about buying an older boat, at a much lower price, and then refitting it to suit our requirements? Were we getting analysis paralysis, or were we being wise in considering all possible options?
It was only February of 2013, and our goal was to have a boat in the spring of 2016, so we weren’t quite worried about making our final decision yet. Plenty of time to get through our analysis paralysis.
Fast forward to June 2013…
On a sunny day in June, I stumbled upon the yacht builders page on sailnet.com. Just for fun, I paged down just to see if there was a builder I didn’t know about yet. We had decided to go through with ordering the H-R 55 in August during the Open Yard boat show in Ellös, but why not? I had finished a big task for work, and felt entitled to disappear down a rabbit hole for 15 minutes while I drank my coffee.
“Discovery Yachts”. Well, this was one I’d never heard of! Click.
Oh holy crap!
Wow!
Houston, we have a problem.
I waited for Jacques to return home for lunch, and showed him the photos and then the video (since taken down as it is of the “Mark I” rather than the “Mark II”) of the Discovery 55. Same reaction. Suddenly, our well thought-out plans were turned upside down.
The lightening bolt effect had happened yet again.
I knew in my heart after seeing the photos and the video, that this was “the one”. I sent for the brochures and I phoned the sales manager directly after lunch to set up a visit to the yard in Southampton. A few days later we received a packet in the mail with brochures, reprints of press articles and photos of the Ron Holland-designed Discovery 55. We had 10 days to go through everything before heading up to Southampton to visit the yard.
This was the info pack that Discovery Yachts sent us in anticipation of our visit.
The first required course on our calendar was the marine first aid course which took us four evenings to complete. The course dealt with the various illnesses and injuries common to the marine environment as well as what to do when a doctor is not immediately available.
The last evening of the course was hands-on with practice in making splints and bandages, giving injections, treating burns, removing foreign objects from someone’s eye (almost made me faint!) and well as CPR, using a defibrillator and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
In January of 2012, we began the off-shore theory course, which ran one evening a week, plus a few Saturday mornings for about 5 months. We had the same “syllabus” as the RYA yacht master theory, with the exception of astronomic navigation. The use of the sextant is not required for our license.
The area we use is all of the chart work and tidal height and stream calculations is the area comprising the Channel Islands, west of the Cotentin Peninsula in France, and north of St. Malo and the eastern Brittany coast — so we do work with tidal heights and currents.
This is the area in the English Channel we used for most of the chart work and passage planning. We have these charts from Imray on our iPads. Irmay also has the Rules and Signals app, which has a full set of the COLREGS – highly recommended!
In addition to the course we did with the Swiss Cruising Club, we followed a video course in navigation done by Duncan Wells at Westview Sailing. He provides navigation instruction in an easy-going and humorous way, and the videos are really well-done. We think he must have had some television experience as he’s well-spoken and the videos have excellent sound quality.
Duncan’s video course was immensely helpful to us because you can repeat the instruction and exercise as much as you want. Sometimes explanations don’t sink in the first time… All you need is the RYA instruction chart (a fictional chart) that come with the RYA Navigation Exercises book. We found this on Amazon.
The RYA Navigation Exercises Book and Charts
Weather is, of course, an important part of seamanship, and we had some great instruction from a former Swissair pilot, on how to read synoptic charts, how pressure systems and fronts work, recognising clouds and cloud formations and what they tell you, etc. A site that we found useful for learning even more about the weather is Frank Singleton’s Weather and Sailing Pages.
After absorbing the instruction and sweating through the all of the exercises throughout the spring, we sat the 7-hour long exam in mid-June. The morning part, from 8.30 to 12.00, consisted of questions on seamanship, weather, COLREGS, security and first aid. In addition, we had four tidal height exercises (will we have enough water at this anchorage at low tide, will we be able to enter the marina at St. Helier or St. Malo, what is the latest time we have to exit the marina, etc.). We had a lunch break, until 13.30, and then we were given the most difficult part of the exam – 20 chart and passage-making exercises to complete before 17.00.
After we handed our chart work, It took another hour for the group of “judges” to go over our exams and give us either a pass or fail. We then had to wait until the names of the people who passed were called. My name was called second but poor Jacques was the last one called! He had to suffer in suspense until the end.
We had gotten through the theory part of the license requirements. Now we just had to get 700 more certified nautical miles under our belts!
Some of our boat purchases – before we had a boat!
Intention becomes action
Our intention, back in August of 2011, was to give ourselves 5 years to “reach cruising attitude”. At the beginning of 2012, we started taking action. This was our action list:
Get licensed to be able to register the boat (required in Switzerland, where we live)
Make a final decision on the boat (get to a short list of 2 boats by the end of the year)
Decide what to do with our businesses so that we could be away
Start to downsize our possessions so that we could sell our house
Keep buying things for the boat to take advantage of boat show deals and seasonal sales while we still had income coming in*
Read as much about live-aboard cruising, seamanship, and boat maintenance as possible*
Start buying a library of pilotage books for the areas we were going to visit during our first few years on the boat. (We saved the purchase of paper charts for the last minute as they are constantly updated) *
Follow other helpful cruisers blogs*
* I’ll publish the list of our books, equipment and favourite blogs in an upcoming post.
Some of the books we purchased – here are some piloting books and some inspirational books. “The Missing Centimetre” by Leon Schultz is a great book for inspiration.
More of our book purchases. ” The Voyager’s Handbook” by Beth Leonard is immensely helpful
Our friends would laugh and say, “you don’t even have a boat, why are you doing all of this?” No, we didn’t have a boat. We didn’t even have the money to buy a boat at this point, but we were totally, 100% sure that we would have one in 5 years. There was not a doubt in minds.
It’s not enough to think “It would be so nice to have boat”. You have to be thinking “I have a sailboat (!) , it is a XX and I love it”
The most important item on our action list at this point was to find out what the requirements are to register a boat under the Swiss flag.
The first thing we needed is the Swiss offshore sailing license. The only foreign certification accepted is the RYA yacht master. Otherwise you have to do the course held by the Swiss Cruising Club). Here are the steps and requirements for the Swiss offshore license:
Offshore and coastal navigation theory course (5 months)
Offshore experience – 1,000 documented nautical miles done with a qualified skipper after having passed the theory exam
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