Adventure arrives in Dubai

Last week I splashed Adventure in the huge Jebel Ali Port, one of the biggest in the world.
The quaysides are about 10 feet high from the waterline, and it's pretty nasty tying up alongside with big vessels passing. The bow waves can smack you up against the dock and easily damage a small boat.
A brand new 50ft stinkpot was badly damaged a few weeks ago in exactly this way when a tug passed too fast and really smashed it up against the quayside. The boat rises, and as she drops, the fenders ride up the quay and land on deck...

After a few anxious minutes trying to start the engine, she fired up, and I was able to motor out of the port - minus mast and bowsprit, and from there, out to sea for a couple of hours trip around the

Palm Island.

The monstrous pink Atlantis Hotel is perched on the end.

The mast still has to be stepped, as I had to leave for France where I'll be till the 24th.

I can't wait to get those tanbark sails up now that the weather in Dubai is cooling down after the brutal heat of the summer.

We have been sailing every weekend in temperatures of 45 degrees C ( 113 fahrenheit) .

The Chronicles of Adventure!

This September I became the proud owner of Bristol Channel Cutter Adventure - the culmination of a year of dreaming and searching for the right boat.

Finally I found another proud owner who was moving to Nebraska - the heart of the country and about as far away as you can get from the oceans around the USA, and who had to part with his beloved BCC.

As soon as I came upon the BCC, I knew it was the boat for me.

The men and women who own these boats are something of a breed apart.

The Sam L Morse BCC doesn't much like going astern - at least it requires a certain application, and practice.

They are smaller than most people's idea of a live-aboard, and they haven't been in production since about 1994, yet the people who own these boats know they have something special.

The build quality, design and functionality came before such secondary considerations as cost of production and profit.

Ultimately, in defiance of modern business practice, the company ceased production rather than cut corners, and produce something less perfect than they could.

The BCC is rock solid, and yet not sluggish or cumbersome.

The author Ferenc Mate described the BCC as the most beautiful 28 ft fibreglass sailboat in the world - period.

To me he hit the nail right on the head.