Background

A little background to this Blog: I am Carol and I sail with my husband James, we have been sailing together for over 30 years.  This is our 5^th yacht, we started with an Achilles 24 and our boats grew as our sons Jeremy and Charles got bigger.  However, the children are now grown up so we mainly sail on our own.  Paddington IV is a Moody Eclipse 38.  She is a 38’ sailing yacht with a large 62 horse power engine and a deck saloon which gives us an inside helming position – great in wet and cold weather but also good when it is too sunny and we don’t want to get burnt!  We have an owners cabin with an en suite heads (loo etc) which I use and just outside the cabin is the main heads with an excellent shower – this is James’ though I usually shower here as well!  There is a compact galley with microwave, fridge and gas cooker – 2 burners, grill and separate oven and 1.5 sinks, fairly good storage.  The main saloon has raised seating so we can see out of the windows and watch the world go by.  There is an a double aft cabin but this is used for storage - this year it is fuller that ever - having been warned that Norway is very expensive I have stocked up with lots of tins and meal pouches plus loads of fizzy cans of drink, I have allowed 1 a day for James plus extra for Pimms etc for both of us, which adds up to a lot about 250!  The aft cabin is also home to two folding bikes, sun shade and cockpit cushions.

For many years our sailing has been mainly around East Anglia, with our base being Woolverstone on the River Orwell.  Our summer holiday were usually taken sailing around the inland waterways and lakes of Holland.  However, since retirement we have ventured further a field and in 2008 we sailed to Sweden and spent time in the Stockholm Archipelago and went as far east as the Aland Islands.  Our route back took us across Sweden through the Gota  and Trollehatte Canals to Goteborg and back through Denmark and the Kiel Canal.  In 2009 we were once again in the Baltic, when we sailed along the German, Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian coasts to Finland and we returned via Sweden and Denmark.  On both these trips we were away for 4 months, so this years trip to the Arctic Circle will be of a similar duration and distance.