I have just pulled together some stats on our 2011 Round Britain Trip the details are attached. For any interested in doing something similar here are a few bits that may help.
The Stats are the attached pdf file at the bottom of this thread.
For those that dont know, 2 Ribs in Sept 2011 went round Britain, taking about 1 month to complete. The ribs were 1 x Ribcraft 6.8m + Suzuki 200, 1 x Coastline 7m + Suzuki 175.
I had seen the TV show 3 men in a boat with Griff Rys Jones cruising from one distillery to the next in the western isles, and I had just turned 50, was in need of a mid life crisis, and had visions of the western isles, laughter, and distilleries for us. I didn't happen quite like that, we did get to drink a pint or 2 each evening but never made it to a distillery. The trip was exhausting, we had no support crew and had never really considered it necessary. When you look at our average day being only under 4 hours driving, and our longest day being 10 1/2 hours you may wonder what the big deal was.
Every evening when we got into port we would split into 2 teams, one team would head off to find our accommodation, check out somewhere for supper, and then do the marathon task of writing the daily blog.
Team 2 would find a friendly harbour master /lifeboat crew / marina crew and try to get a lift to a petrol station with our jerry cans, (mostly 2 trips) to refuel the boats. Next prepare the boats for the night and do any maintenance. Find / book accommodation for the next night, check in with harbour masters, etc. Then the task of planning the next days passage, checking tides weather, channels, firing ranges, windfarms, plotting the course on a laptop, (very often well over 50 waypoints in a day if you stick close to the coastline). We didnt always get this bit right as we got told off for crossing 3 live fining ranges, and one wind farm under construction !
Beer, Shower, Beer, Supper, edit / upload the days video, get to bed about midnight.
At the end of the month we were like walking Zombies.
I also knew that as soon as the school summer holidays end we get a lovely Indian summer, so September was our time for the trip, (also easier to get accommodation). Again it never quite happened as planned, one storm after another. We had said we will stay in port if the wind was force 5 or above, but from the stats you can see that we had 18 days at or above force 5. It was not a good year weatherwise, so I also logged the weather this year and note that we had it a lot worse.
Would I do it again, Oh Yes, I learnt a lot and it was very rewarding, and now feel that the rib can take me almost anywhere.
Good Luck to anyone else thinking of going.
The full blog on the trip is still available at
Take Two Ribs
