Cruising with Amy

September 19, 2026September 19, 2026

Porto Santo

Thunderstorms, heavy rain, and strong winds accompanied by uncomfortable swell showed no signs of letting up, and life on board became a bit harder. On the other hand, I had started meeting regularly with the two harbor masters, Martín and Pedro, and the boatswain of the rescue cruiser, José Manuel. These encounters were always fun and interesting, and I learned more about the Canary Islands and job opportunities there. José Manuel was so enthusiastic about my shortwave radio that he immediately ordered a used one with all the accessories on eBay the very next day.

August 24, 2026August 25, 2026

Camariñas

The first two days had light winds and small waves, and it was great sailing close to the wind (with the wind coming diagonally from the front). That was actually another downside of this weather window: most of the route would be beating. But in the beginning this was to our advantage, because the relative wind amplifies the actual wind, allowing you to make good progress even in light winds. Still, I couldn’t really enjoy it because I had the cold front on my mind, which was supposed to arrive during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday. Kudi had kindly agreed to monitor the weather from home and send me his thoughts while I was out on the water. That, as well as receiving weather data via shortwave email, is now all possible with my new ham radio setup, with which I’m very happy.

August 16, 2026August 25, 2026

Camaret Sur Mer

After a restless night at the mooring buoy in St. Mary’s, we set off at 5:30 a.m. with the first light and the ebb tide. Over the past few days, I’d been very preoccupied with the weather and had been making myself crazy over whether it would be better to sail directly from here to Madeira (most probably considering the prevalent weather), but I ultimately decided against it. There was a light tailwind, so we sailed goosewinged. Unfortunately, the swell kept getting stronger and was coming more from the side, even though the wind direction hadn’t changed, so the sails soon started flapping so hard that I had to reef them down quite a bit. We were now moving pretty slowly, but at least we were heading in the right direction. Toward evening, we were once again accompanied by dolphins. Somehow, that never gets boring and is always great fun.

August 11, 2026August 25, 2026

Isles of Scilly

I had planned to leave around 2300 at high tide. Since the entire area around the harbor was full of lobster pots (lobster traps anchored to the seabed that are marked by buoys attached to lines, which in turn wrap themselves wonderfully around a boat’s propeller, keel, or rudder), I thought it might perhaps be better to still have some daylight for the first hour. The harbor master grinned and said that the buoys get pulled underwater by the current anyway and are barely visible. Besides, other than what I’d assumed, there’s no slack water here at high tide. So it didn’t really matter either way, but I set off at 2200 anyway, just to have a bit of twilight as a sort of alibi to put my mind at ease.

August 3, 2026August 11, 2026

Kilmore Quay

We cast off at 1400. Everything went fine, but I was feeling anxious and scared for some reason. After another All Stations Safety Call came in on my radio—it makes a very annoying, loud warning sound and then automatically switches to the channel selected by the station—I tried to reset everything and worked my way through various menus when nothing happened. I do it all the time, but being the nervous wreck that I was, I selected the wrong menu and ended up triggering an All-Stations Urgency Call myself. Before I could undo anything, Dublin Coast Guard was already asking what was going on. I explained my mishap and they reacted very kindly and then I heard on Channel 16, “All stations… please cancel the urgency call sent from the sailing yacht Amy, call sign…, MMSI…, etc., it was triggered by mistake”… a bit embarrassing. Oh well.

July 27, 2026August 4, 2026

Dun Laoghaire, Dublin Bay

As is often the case, it turned out to be even shittier than I’d feared. But once underway, there’s nothing you can do about it anyway, so you just take what comes. There’s really not much else to say about this 110-nautical-mile trip. It was very rough, wet, and windy, and I’m glad that, apart from a tear in the sprayhood seam caused by waves washing over the bow and a bit of water below deck (also from those waves), nothing else got damaged.

July 23, 2026August 4, 2026

Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland

The Mull of Kintyre doesn’t have a very good reputation. There’s even a canal to avoid having to sail along its outer edge. We’d had enough of canals and locks, and since the weather didn’t look like it would cause any serious problems, we set off toward Belfast, sailing right past the Mull.
The plan was to time the tide and our journey so that we’d arrive at slack tide, and then ride with the current south through the North Channel.

July 20, 2026August 4, 2026

Port Ellen, Islay

We weighed anchor under sail and sped through the southern Sound of Jura toward Islay, carried by the tide and a strong wind. Off Port Ellen, the tide had turned and the wind was coming straight from the front, so we were hardly making any progress over the last few miles to the harbor. As always docking was an adventure in the strong wind, and it didn’t work out until the third try and while backing off another berth—even though we were trying to steer straight astern—Amy decided to make a large circle right onto our assigned finger dock. How nice.

July 19, 2026August 4, 2026

Jura

I haven’t written in a long time. We’ve been sailing a lot; I’ve been worrying a lot about the weather and other things, planning our routes based on the weather and tides, and besides, Zissi and I also wanted to spend some time together and go on shore excursions. So the blog had to wait, but here it is:

July 17, 2026July 19, 2026

Oban

The next day, cast off with the tide and sailed the 30 nautical miles to Oban. I hadn’t expected it, but we were able to sail the entire way beautifully. The Corran rapids were relatively unspectacular thanks to the wind direction, and we flew through them without the nasty waves. We even passed another sailboat—something that almost never happens. Just before Oban, a small dolphin came for a brief visit, but then changed its mind.