The original idea

Bybyn-Bubyn (BB) is the name of my 1989 built Cornish Shrimper. BB presently lives in Rock, North Cornwall. My sailing of her to date has been restricted to the Camel Estuary. Having now retired from fulltime work I now have more time on my hands and thus last winter I began to think of a trip that BB could make venturing away from the North Cornish coast.
Since my home is a few miles north of Chichester Harbour in West Sussex the idea that sprang to mind was to bring BB to Bosham, a very pretty village in the Harbour. There are really two options to get to Chichester from Rock. The first is to go, by road a journey of perhaps 5 hours; the second is to go by sea, a slightly longer journey time! No prizes for guessing which option I have decided to embark upon!

The journey is being planned to commence shortly after the ending of Shrimper Week in Rock in early July. This is a week of Shrimper racing in the estuary where up to 40 boats will race against each other every day. Great fun and very friendly racing. Once the racing is over I will begin to provision the boat with all that is necessary for her outbound trip.
She will be equpped with minimal electronics - a couple of handheld GPSs, a wireless netbook and a VHF/DSC radio as well as the paper charts. She is being fitted with a log and distance recorder and has two decent compasses in addition to the GPS.

Assisting me on this journey will be a few chums including Richard Goodman, Richard Sargent, Peter Innes-Ker, Philip Currie and Joanna Turnage. They will all be aboard the Shrimper with me at different points of the trip. Peter's very comfortable Sabre 42 "Resolution" will be undertaking the leg from Falmouth back to the Solent acting as "mother ship" supplying crew and no doubt advanced navigational assistance!

For those of you don't know about Cornish Shrimpers - they are a 19 foot long gaff rigged sailing boat with an auxiliary inboard diesel engine ( in my case) with very limited accommodation for two below. Many others have an outboard engine. They are instantly recogniseable by their tan sails. They are renowned for their seaworthiness and some impressive voyages have been made by Shrimpers - including around Britain, from the South Coast UK to Northern Norway and many have done the same trip that I plan to do in early July.

I will add to this, my first ever attempt at blogging, in due course.