Sailing Bucket List

Tillerman rather cheekily accused the sailing blog community of apathy in the lack of response to his latest group writing project, namely the bucket list of sailing things to do before heading down to Davy Jones's locker.

In this case it was the difficult combination of trying to run a small business while fighting a lingering 'flu virus which has delayed this post.

So in no particular order here are some items on my sailing to do list:

1. Join local dinghy sailing club. No excuses here, have missed it for two summers and there are three sailing clubs close by. Actually that's sort of an excuse - how on earth to choose?

2. Finish the trans-Atlantic by sailing from England to the Canary Islands. For the ARC we started at Grand Canaria so actually it was a mini-transat, and any how the cross Biscay voyage would be "interesting".

3. Do the Antigua Sailing week - big boat sailing in the Caribbean with lots of parties in the sun - how can that not be a good idea?

4. Sail high latitudes. This one goes back to adverts from Challenge Business for sailing one of their 72 foot steel boats up by Spitsbergen or Svalbard, which ok would probably be very cold, but also fascinating.

5. Sail some more big boats. I've sailed a Volvo 60 and would like to see what its like on either a Volvo 70 or Open 60.

6. Sail the Scottish islands. Its just beautiful up there and pretty unspoilt and not crowded like the Solent.

7. Follow in my alleged ancestor's William Dampier's footsteps in some of his round the world voyages. Couldn't do the whole thing as he spent something like 12 years travelling but it would be fascinating to experience first hand the places he sailed to. I imagine them as exotic Pacific islands like the picture above.

No doubt what I actually do will be very different!