About

This blog is about the voyages of the yacht Graptolite. It also includes some related off-boat travels where they are side-trips but most of our non-sailing journeys can be found in www.chaos-travel.com .

Graptolite is a Bavaria 44 built in 2002. The hull is GRP with a fin/bulb keel with a spade rudder. The rigging is for a fractional sloop. The LOA is almost 14 metres. Initially bought in 2004 as a liveaboard with modest voyages in the Solent and across the English Channel to France. By 2007 conversion was underway for blue-water sailing and a wind generator, diesel generator and a reverse osmosis watermaker were added.

Departure from the comfort of the Hamble River was at the end of  August 2007 with a target of making Las Palmas, Gran Canaria in time for the start of the ARC race to St. Lucia. The Canary Islands were reached. The Atlantic was crossed and the plan was to carry on westward with the the inaugural around-the-world rally know as the World ARC. Beginning in early 2008, the Caribbean was crossed and then through Panama Canal into the Pacific with island hopping across the South Pacific to Australia. By Darwin in Northern Australia slow repair work had us miss the race leg departure and the decision was made to abandon the World ARC and the planned route around the Cape of Good Hope to the Caribbean and navigate a much more interesting route through SE Asia, northern Indian Ocean and Red Sea to the Mediterranean.

Graptolite reached the Eastern Mediterranean by the summer of 2009 and spent the next two years creeping through the waters of Cyprus, Turkey, Greece and Italy and reaching Venice by the summer of 2011. The Venice area was a base for many years while business kept us from doing much. Then in 2018 were moved southwards down the Adriatic to Preveza in the Ionian Sea of Greece.

The circumnavigation, begun in 2007 was completed in 2023 with a voyage from Split, Croatia to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

Graptolite has never returned to the Hamble River and is “still on patrol” with a new German flag.