Welcome to the Blog
After several years of procrastinating I've finally registered a 'proper' domain name and moved from SailBlogs to Blogger, as I felt that the SailBlog layout was quite 'restrictive'. The SailBlog's mapping integration was brilliant, but after reading a post on one of the sailing forums I follow recommending the website No Foreign Land would do the same thing I jumped ship, so to speak. Crossing platforms is never an easy task and you will spot several rough edges before I get round to fixing them. One of those tasks for a cold winter's night.
Aphrodite, Plymouth Sound.
The blog was created as my onboard log keeping is worse than hopeless and I wanted to develop the discipline of 'reasonable log keeping' in order to be able to look back at what I've done on Aphrodite over the last few years.
As an old IT geek I still like to use some html and see a website develop. I have had some fun with tables and think I have finally got them into a format I like.
I'm very much a cruising sailor. Speed, in any form, has never interested me and I can't get my head round why anybody would want to race past a coast at over ten knots and miss all the amazing sights and sounds that there is to be seen and heard.
Until October 2025 I volunteered as Sea Staff with the Ocean Youth Trust - South and from time to time crew on the occasional delivery trip with Halcyon Yachts.
All times on the boat are Universal Time (UT) also known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as this makes a whole raft of calculations a lot easier and I have kept that format here. I just need to remember to change to 'land time' when I step ashore, so not to be late for the pub. This has proven useful on the Faro to Falmouth trip in 2022 as Portugal follows Western European Time (WET) and Western European Summer Time (WEST) in summer. Spain and France follow Central European Time (CET) and Central European Summer Time (CEST). I just added one or two hours when walking ashore while the rest of the crew confused themselves.
Over time the layout of posts have evolved and I'm beginning to settle on one post for each 24 hour period on as I felt that having one post for a longer passage was confusing.
While underway I transmit on AIS and can be found on the Marine Traffic Website, if I am in range of one of their receiving stations. Take a look here or better still click on the Location page on the menu.
Weather Forecast
Being a huge fan of the Shipping Forecast on the BBC I try and post the shipping forecast for the sea area that I am sailing in on each post, along with the synoptic chart. Like most sailors I use several forecasting tools including the inshore forecast which has a bit, but not much, more nuance.
Contact and Social Media
Should you wish to contact me please use the boat's email address
gibsea96aphrodite [at] gmail [dot] com
I also post on Instagram and Threads as @sail_aphrodite
Updated: 17/12/2025