Hi, I'm Barry.

Hi, I'm Barry

I learned to sail in the 70's on friend Geoff's National 12 and David's Hobie 16 catamaran. Great days. In the 80's Janet and I bought our first yacht, a Jaguar 25 and since then we've never looked back. I gained the Yachtmaster Offshore qualification in the late 90's simply to make our paperwork look more impressive to foreign reviewers. They have yet to look impressed! Janet and I have covered over 10,000 miles on Mithril

For the 10 years prior to retirement I worked as a communications consultant, specifically at the leading edge of mobile phone design and manufacture. Clients have been based in Finland, Japan, Korea, Czech Republic, US and UK. The work was stunningly complex but very exciting and luckily involved regular travel inside all of these countries. Sadly Nokia and Motorola slipped the net but the rest made quite a catch; you know the names.  (Update June 2006:  Motorola just bought the company.)

I'm Janet.

I'm Janet

My first experience of sailing was a cold windy day in October sometime in the eighties, it was on Ullswater in the English Lake District aboard a Hobie Cat. Not the best of introductions but since then its only got better. Now I am well and truly hooked; I enjoy the voyage planning the pilotage and the freedom that sailing gives us, to choose whether to moor in a busy harbour or anchor in a quite backwater.

walking in the forects in Galicia

and the two of us

retired early to follow our dream, and that dream was to live aboard and sail as long as we enjoyed it. And as you can see (or read) we have enjoyed the last two years so much we have swapped our Endurance 38 Mithril for something bigger and more sporty, a shiny new Dufour 40 Performance called Ruby Tuesday.

David (with spinaker).

This is David,

our eldest son. He's joined us in the Baltic for 4 weeks visiting Finland, Russia and Estonia, he has helped on our shake-down cruises in the LR area aboard Ruby Tuesday in 2005, has sailed in Galicia during 2006 and visited us on Madeira in 2007.

Here he can be seen ready to release the spinnaker if our speed becomes excessive (that means any more frightening) as we have never travelled at 10 knots before.

walking in the forects in Galicia

Sister Margaret & Nigel

Margaret and Nigel visit most years, and so have sailed on Ruby Tuesday with us in La Rochelle, La Coruna and Lagos. As well as the UK of course, but on Mithril..

Eve on the helm racing.

Sister Eve.

2008 was Eve's first vist sailing since the mid eighties. She visited us in Lagos and joined us for the club regatta on the Sunday. Here she is on the helm approaching one of the turning marks.