Having purchased Tyrian of Truro from her previous owner, Peter Flutter, in December 2021 our first task was to find a way of getting her ‘home’. That is to say, we needed to move her from her existing berth in Falmouth (some 700 miles by car from our home) to Inverness Marina where she would be only a half hour drive from our home.
There were many known maintenance requirements and upgrades required to bring her up to standard for a prolonged off-shore venture and I did not doubt that the list would only increase once we’d had a chance to sail her.
Paramount amongst our concerns was that Tyrian was an unfamiliar yacht, much larger than our previous yacht, Tina Louise, and we would be taking out into open waters on a long journey North in January – hardly the most favoured month to be sailing around the UK.
Suffice to say, I am hugely thankful to my friends Graham Mann and Jon Delafield-Butt for agreeing to help me sail her round – especially given both were fully aware of just how bitterly uncomfortable the journey would likely turn out to be.
We spent two days in Falmouth preparing Tyrian for sail, replacing the broken Windex, preparing a bridle for the sea drogue, understanding the various onboard systems, what worked, what didn’t and generally satisfying ourselves that everything was sufficiently in order to undertake the passage up the West Coast of Scotland. During that time we were glad to be visited by Peter Flutter, whom was able to provide some last minute details about the boat setup and by Stewart Willis, whom would end up being our ‘weather-support’ guide as we were forced to take uncertain decisions when storms began to roll in from the West.
We finally set sail Thursday 27th January with the aim of reaching Stornoway before the 7th February when my leave from work was up. That aim was always tempered by the ‘weather permitting’ caveat. But as it turned out, the weather was most certainly not permitting and several maintenance issues held us up for several days in Bantry on the South West coast of Ireland.