2012 Stats

Counting up the days and nights on board in 2012 ...

Maintenance Weekend - 4 days, 3 nights
Rigging Weekend - 2 days, 2 nights
Yet Another Fitout Trip - 4 days, 4 nights
Launch Weekend - 3 days, 3 nights
Spring Cruise - 4 days, 4 nights
July Weekend - 2 days, 2 nights
Summer Cruise - 14 days, 15 nights
August Weekend - 2 days, 2 nights
Bosuns Weekend - 2 days, 2 nights
Autumn Weekend - 2 days, 2 nights
Laying Up Weekend - 1 day, 1 night

Note that travel days that did not include any significant acvitivy (sailing or maintenance) are not counted as days on board.

We managed to squeeze in a total of 10 trips to the boat (11 if you split the Launch Weekend and Spring Cruise although the latter followed on immediately from the former).

A total of 14 days on board were accumulated during maintenance trips. Yep, that total just surprised the hell out of me too!

I spent 26 days on board sailing, motoring or just generally faffing about. Another surprise.

I spent a total of 40 nights on board. A theme is developing here! Yes again, more surprise. Jane spent rather less time on board - 11 days and nights but that was  badly affected by missing out on the maintenance weekend due to an ear infection and the cancelled long weekend later in the year.

Rik was, inevitably, the next most active crew member after myself with Mark and Glen only managing a short weekend each (Mark missing out on the Summer Cruise due to work). Tony finally made it on board albeit with the boat on the bank but Heather missed out altogether this year.

We covered a shade over 400 nautical miles, 321 of them during the Summer Cruise. Our overall average speed was near as makes no odds 3.9 knots. Must say I'm quite chuffed with the average speed (Brigantia will only do about 6 knots absolutely flat out under sail and about a knot less under power so we're doing quite well to average around two thirds of hull speed across all conditions).

Give or take (and making allowances for motoring the upper reaches of the river too and from the moorings more often than not) we're running at a roughly 60/40 spilt between sailing and motoring*

I have to confess that I had developed an entirely erroneous feeling that we hadn't done that much this year apart from the Summer Cruise. OK, granted that was the only time we made it beyond the mouth of the river but we actually put in a lot of good work improving the boat and made good use of her as a getaway as well as putting in the big trip. What's more, the Spring Cruise was a disappointment due to the weather and we lost a planned long weekend on board which would have added even further to the totals. I am so surprised I shall have to go and make a coffee! ...

Our mileage could easily have been doubled if we'd had better weather but even so it's not so bad taken in context with what other sailors have been reporting on the forums. Of course, there are the retired and the well to do logging four figure mileages but there are plenty of much bigger boats than us who've logged similar runs and quite a few reporting less mileage acheived than we managed.

* This has been skewed somewhat by the conditions encountered during the Summer Cruise where we were faced with quite a few occasions where there simply wasn't any wind to sail with and a couple of occasions when the wind was dead foul and timing constraints made motoring a necessary evil.