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When we bought our first boat back in 1999, a coastal cruiser that we named Dirona, the salesperson asked how many hours a year we expected to put on. “Fifty, maybe a hundred” we replied. We both worked in busy software jobs in Seattle and weren’t expecting to be able to boat that frequently. We…

Belfast Harbour Marina opened in 2009 in the city’s rejuvinated Titanic Quarter and provides an excellent base for accessing the city. The marina is the first we’ve been to that is completely self-serve: moorage can’t be reserved in advance and is paid daily through a ticket machine similar to that in a car park. We…

Just under three years ago, we purchased a full set of ProStock Marine fenders. We like to be well-fendered so we ended up buying just over $2,000 worth of these fenders. In the intervening three years we have been super-impressed with them. They have been used in gales up against cement walls, when fueling from…

In several days of touring around Belfast we’d seen no signs of the violence, known as “The Troubles”, that once made it among the world’s most dangerous cities. Of the 1,541 killings there, most ocurred north and west of the city and it is in West Belfast that evidence of the conflict is still prominent….

The best way to have two generators is to actually install two generators. But two generators would be a tight fit in our engine room. Milt Baker proved on Nordhavn 4732 Bluewater that, with skill and forward thinking, you actually can fit two generators into a Nordhavn 47 or 52. It is a rare configuration. Most,…

Belfast’s Titanic Quarter stands on part of the shipyard where the ill-fated vessel was built and is one of the world’s largest urban-waterfront regeneration projects. The 185-acre (75 hectare) site includes Titanic Studios, Belfast Harbour Marina, and hotel, office, education, retail and apartment complexes. The district also is home to a number of excellent nautical…

One of the reasons we’d come to Belfast was to see one of our favourite bands, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, at the renowned Limelight. We admittedly were a little nervous about the idea. Belfast was once considered one of the world’s most dangerous cities and it’s impossible not to reflect on years of violence covered…

We started the year in the New World, at Charleston in South Carolina, and ended it in the Old World at Falmouth, UK. From January 1st through December 31st, we traveled 6,281 miles at an average speed of 6.9 kts and put 913 hours on our John Deere 6068AFM75. Our main engine now has 9,522…

The Harland and Wolff twin shipbuilding gantry cranes dominate the Belfast skyline and are a notable landmarks on entering Belfast Harbour. Harland and Wolff are a shipbuilding and offshore construction company founded in Belfast in 1861 who built most of the ships for the White Star Line, including the Titanic and its sister ships Olympic…

The Isle of Gigha, just north of the Mull of Kintyre, was our last stop in Scotland. After an early monrning run from Oban, we stopped at Gigha for two nights to wait for a storm system to pass through before continuing south to Ireland. While there we installed the new Rule 3700 bilge pump…