After a very sunny and slightly emotional farewell party at the Sailor's Inn in Hindeloopen, we left our home port on the 2nd of May for Terschelling, to the sound of ships horns from all our friends as we sailed away! On the trip to Terschelling we were joined by Jager and Bosse, who will sail around the British Isles with us, and also Yulunga and Taika who came along to Terschelling. Waiting out the weather for another day, Jacky Explorer and crew left Dutch waters on the 4th of May for the round the world trip! We had a rather uneventful (lots of motoring) crossing towards Hartlepool, but once we closer to the English coast the wind freshened to a force 6 which made for an interesting/scary entry into the rather tight harbour locks. We stayed in Hartlepool for a few days while Jager's crew reunited with the fishermen they had rescued from their liferaft a few years earlier. We had a great time with Phil and Tracy Walsh and got a very interesting insight in the fishing business!

Our next stop was Eyemouth which is a lovely small harbour, but unfortunately every single pontoon berth was occupied by catamarans servicing the wind farms, so we had to tie up to the quay wall for a few days. the wind really picked up which left us in Eyemouth for a week, which was no problem as we spent the time playing golf with Jager on the spectacular course on top of the cliffs and also took a daytrip bij train to Edinburgh.

After Eyemouth, we had some great sailing along the coast with stopovers in Aberdeen in the commercial port and Buckie in the fishing harbour- no marinas in this part of Scotland, with Peterhead out of business during to storm damage! The weather being unstable, Jager, Bosse and us decided to use the Caledonian canal to get to the West Coast.