The Boat is Bought

Jim and Rosemary are now the proud owners of "Avalon of Falmouth" a Migrant 36 designed by E G Van de Stadt and built by Morvoren Seacraft, Cornwall, launched in 1993. "Avalon" is a steel cutter rigged sloop, length 11m and with 6 berths.

The previous owners Alan and Linda Walker sailed her to Mallorca, where we found her in April on the hard in Santa Ponsa. On 29 May we fly to Mallorca to take possession of the boat and sail her back to the UK. We have a sort of relay crew to help us along the way. Son Barnaby and friend Tom Hammond will start off with us and leave us at some point on the south coast of mainland Spain to fly back from Alicante. Julian Wallis will join us in Southern Spain and go around Gibraltar, maybe staying as far as Portugal. Paul Froggatt joins us somewhere along the Algarve and travels maybe as far as La Coruna in north-west Spain. Meantime Alex, Andrew Hartley and Cass are aiming to take the ferry to Santander, then train to La Coruna. With luck and fair winds they will be with us back to the UK, probably Falmouth.

Jim and Rosemary Arrive Back in England

We arrived back safely in UK on 18 July, having taken just under 7 weeks to sail our boat 1875 miles, visiting 22 foreign ports and finally berthing in Falmouth. “Avalon” was put into the water on 31 May at the marina at Santa Ponsa, Mallorca. On June 1st our first set of crew arrived, son Barnaby and friend Tom Hammond. And so our journey began: our diary reads as follows…

Now getting improvements made to boat in and around Falmouth area, and preparing house in Dorridge for letting. Departure planned for end of September: over Bay of Biscay to Spain, down coast of Spain and Portugal to Canaries, to await trade winds for crossing Atlantic to Caribbean in early 2001.

Website author found - Yolande picks up the Gauntlet!

Yolande Knight - long suffering older sister to the cheeky and possibly overadventurous brother Jim has been talked into keeping the rest of the world abreast with the location of the little piece of wood Jim and Rosemary will be inhabiting for the next couple of years. Following her recent visit to Falmouth last weekend she gives her first report on their progress:

Avalon Progress Report 02.11.

This is the first of what I hope will be regular bulletins on the progress of Jim and Rosemary Zoro on the good ship Avalon bound for sunny climes.

They left Dorridge a couple of weeks ago but unfortunately due to adverse weather conditions they are still in Falmouth waiting for a more favourable forecast, as they cannot set out to cross the Bay of Biscay with all the Lows queueing up to cause problems in that area. What they want is a nice spell of calm weather in the right place with a light wind in the right direction. There are still one or two small jobs that need doing on the boat, but nothing that will stop them going once the weather is right.

Michael and I spent Sunday and Monday nights on the boat with them - (Sunday was a bad night with storm force gales and torrential rain, but you will be pleased to know that the boat behaved itself well - it was all the clanking and groaning from rigging, fenders and the wind generator that stopped us from sleeping). For those of you who have not seen it, Avalon is very comfortable inside, with all mod cons including central heating. Falmouth is a nice little town and there are good facilities near by. There is an interesting harbour, with lots going on, so they can wait out the storms in comfort. Of course they are now eager to be on their way, particularly since the winter is closing in here, and the call of warm sunny shores is getting more appealing by the day.

We will keep this information updated, so as soon as there is more news we will let you know.

Yolande is acting as contact person for Jim and Rosemary when they are out of sight of land, she can be contacted at:

Alex will be acting as website technical advisor so if you find anything broken contact me at:

Click on the globe to view map of Journey Home