The weather is still truly dreadful. It is February and we have had storm after storm. So with yet another storm raging on our door step we decided to once again look back through our achieves, but this time for the happy days where we have just enjoyed being out.

We started this weeks video with some footage we took while going out for a walk. The one thing I can say about that walk was that it really blew the cobwebs out of our head, but it was a good exhilarating walk. Once we returned to Salty Lass, we settled down and just started chatting about our halcyon days, you can still hear the weather raging in the background, so we really enjoyed talking about the happy days on Salty Lass.

Exuberance

We were so happy about buying Salty Lass. We had been planning to buy a boat of our own for two years, in that time we had improved our sailing, joined a Yacht club to give us lots of different sailing experiences, chartered a yacht, with a skipper so that we could gain our Day skipper qualifications and attended other courses so that we could operate the radio and understand how our diesel engine worked. So after all that we were finally buying a boat, I was so excited, happy and really pleased all at the same time, while for Beverley it was the first day at sea in our own boat. We actually owned a boat, the day also had its share of disasters as we broke the anchor windlass that day, so Beverley had to pull up the anchor by hand, at night in a gale. When Beverley came to fix the windlass, she found a trip in the circuit and once she turned that to on, the windlass worked.

Wildlife

We love seeing different types of wildlife, we love seeing birds, I particularly love seeing puffins with their bright beaks and the really funny way that they swim and dive. Dolphins are fantastic, my most memorial moments of seeing dolphins are not on camera, but one was seeing a bottle nose dolphin. It was massive, it was just off the stern of our boat and it made the trip with my daughter really good. More memorable for Beverley is travelling at night and seeing all the bioluminescence, the camera does not do it justice, we have a little bit of footage of some really bright bioluminescence, but in the footage you can only see the blue, while in real life you can see hundreds of different colours. Once we even had dolphins swimming through the bioluminescence and seeing the grey torpedoes beside us was just fantastic. We also love seeing seals, Gemma's boyfriend Harry called them wet dogs and that is a great description of how they look, with their little noses poking over the water.

Time

I love sailing just as the sun sets, or the sun rises, when the sun rises you get sun pillars just above where it is going to rise, so you know where to point the camera, while at sun set, you look for the green flash which does not last for long, but is a phenomenon that you can look out for. My favourite sunrise was when we were being towed in by the RNLI, we had a line around our prop, but you get the feeling of a fresh new dawn, coupled with a rescue, so that was a great feeling. For Beverley, her favourite sunrise was when the sea was like glass and the reflections in the placid sea was just wonderful. We also love sun sets with their intense colours and we have some footage of Beverley against the sun set, which just looks great because of the contrast.

We also love seeing the stars. I can rattle off a few constellations while Beverley can do all of them, but seeing the beautiful stars is just brilliant. When you are travelling by boat, you just live at a slow rhythm, getting up with the sun and going to bed just after the sun sets. Its a different way of life, slower, but fantastic.

Champagne

Champagne sailing is when the sea is flat and you are just sailing merily along. Those days don't happen all that often, but to have just enough wind to sail by, along with warm weather it is just brilliant. We are also pleased when we get things right, for example on a journey from Millport to Troon, we did a fantastic gybe and it is just brilliant when you get things right, having a plan come together is just brilliant. Sometime we just love the times when we have sailed the whole length of our jouney, for example we went from Carrickfergus all the way over to Larne, we tacked the whole way, but we also sailed the whole way and that too is just brilliant.

Fear

In a way fear just heightens your experience, having a fear, just means that you are on the edge and you seem to see more and experience more. We have had some cracking sails where we have a fear right at the start of our journey and we have managed to overcome that fear and sail at the very best of our ability. Good examples of this is sailing to Porth Dinllaen, we had some high winds, we were needing to had steer but we were clipping along and it was just brilliant. The next day we had a different fear, when the electrics went, but we still had a cracking sail.

So that is just a brief look at our happy times, for us it was good to get away from this weather and just dream of happy times