Jayne

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Writer, designer, and artist, Jayne is the member of the family with the most battered passport. Having already explored a lot of the world by land - including a year driving down through Africa in a Land Rover - she’s ready to take the next chapter by sea.

In 2019, Jayne crewed on a crossing of the Atlantic in the Clipper 60 Starling. Maybe next time it’ll be in Scout?

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Recent posts by Jayne

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A Hurricane Season Hiatus for Scout

Oct 25th, 2023 Jayne Destinations

Since our last blog update in June, Scout has been sitting out the hurricane season down in Grenada.

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Puerto Rico

Apr 20th, 2023 Jayne Destinations

Scout’s arrival to the west side of Puerto Rico via the ominous Mona Passage could not have been more contrary to its reputation. We had a comfortable motor sail in becalmed water. A magical full moon and breaching humpback whales guided us in to the town of Puerto Real, just north of Boqueron.

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The Bahamas to the Turks & Caicos

Mar 1st, 2023 Jayne Destinations

Going south east from The Exumas Islands in The Bahamas is considered a big, transitional step for many sailor cruisers. Beyond the relative safety of The Exumas lie the Out Islands of The Bahamas, and this also means some true, bluewater Atlantic sailing.

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The Bahamas, Part 2

Feb 12th, 2023 Jayne Destinations

Apart from the painfully early, pre-dawn start, the sail from Little Harbour in the southern Abacos to the north of Eleuthera was perfect with a broad reach all of the way. We realized early on that Scout was part of a flotilla of sailboats also making the most of the early start to Eleuthera.

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MD to SC via the Three Capes

Nov 20th, 2022 Jayne Destinations

Scout’s presence in Annapolis was dominated by one event - the annual Annapolis Sail Boat Show, and Scout was a display boat, no less. The 5-day show was a frenzy of everything nautical, and it didn’t disappoint.

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Sailing Cape Cod and the Sound

Oct 25th, 2022 Jayne Destinations, Sailing, Food & Drink

We spent a few days in Plymouth reprovisioning, and being what most visitors are - a tourist. A tour of the reconstructed Mayflower mark II gave visitors a flavor of what it must have been like for the first pilgrims to sail from England to the New World in 1620. With 132 passengers and crew on board, plus various domestic animals and cattle, it must have made those 10 weeks at sea fly by!

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Belfast to Bar Harbor, Maine

Sep 13th, 2022 Jayne Destinations

I have joked that every day of sailing comes with some sort of drama that offers us a challenge—thankfully normally minor!— to overcome. Our departure out of Belfast brought the first such drama to deal with.

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Peaceful Penobscot Bay

Aug 14th, 2022 Jayne Destinations, Sailing, Food & Drink

There’s a storm approaching! Our PredictWind app was forecasting gusts of 35 knots in the Penobscot Bay area of Maine. With this info, we decided this would be a good time to seek out a protective hurricane hole and sit it out for a few days. The place we had in mind was beautiful - yet remote - Seal Bay, which was accessed via a meandering channel on the east side of Vinalhaven Island.

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MA to NH via Witches and Lighthouses

Jul 3rd, 2022 Jayne Destinations, Sailing

Farewell Boston! It was fun while it lasted, but we were itching to spread our sail wings and ultimately head down to Maine as locals say, meaning downwind sailing. Our plan was to hop along the coast for reasonably short day sails from 12 to 25 miles a time. This stretch of the coastline from Boston, Massachusetts to Portsmouth, New Hampshire would have us stopping off for the night at Salem, Gloucester and Rockport.

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Scout's Boston Layover

Jun 22nd, 2022 Jayne Destinations, Sailing

Now that Scout was safely docked in Boston, the only thing missing from her interior was us. Once jobs, graduations and homes were dealt with, we promptly took the red-eye from the west to east coast of the US. In what we hope will be the last of the large luggage for a while, we found not one but three of those over-rated inflatable travel neck pillows. I already have a purge pile as I practice living minimally.

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Scout Sets Sail for Southampton

Apr 10th, 2022 Jayne Sailing

After a winter of hanging out on the hard at the Garcia yard, it was time to get Scout’s hull wet again. At 4:45am on March 16th, Scout finally said farewell to France, and ventured out into darkness towards England and across the Channel.

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"Scout": the Name is Official

Dec 2nd, 2021 Jayne The Build

Since the sea trials back in late September and early October, Scout has been hauled-out by Garcia and winterized for the season. While she has been sat on the hard in the French shipyard, one of the final tasks before we set sail in the Spring has been to confirm her name and port of registry - and then have it all marked on her transom.

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Scout's Sea Trial & A Celebratory Local Cocktail

Oct 12th, 2021 Jayne Sailing, Food & Drink

Warning - this post starts heavy on the sail-speak, but finishes light with a local, celebratory brew. As part of the handover of Scout, team Garcia is expected to test Scout’s sailing performance with the many different sailing manoeuvres. On day three of our handover we tagged along with Garcia for the sea trial and combined it with our own test sail in the sailing playground outside of Cherbourg.

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Scout gets her Saltwater Splash

Sep 19th, 2021 Jayne The Build

I had a chance to settle into, and savour, the French lifestyle for a couple of days before the ultimate joie de vivre, namely the splashing of Scout. The symbolism of this was significant in that, what had initially been merely a dream-like vision some years ago, had — after careful planning — now become a reality. Scout will no doubt be hauled out and splashed many, many times throughout her life, but the first time is full of extra excitement and a little trepidation (a.k.a. any leaks…?).

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Scout has Skin (and more)

Aug 24th, 2021 Jayne The Build

Today was a big build milestone for Scout. She finally made an external appearance in readiness for the stepping of the mast, and was dressed for the part, too.

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You Give Me "Sea-Fever"

Jan 30th, 2021 Jayne Music

In anticipation of our future boat Scout, and, as a recent birthday gift, James surprised me with a first edition collection of poems from John Masefield called Salt Water Ballads (1902). The first book of the future British poet laureate was one of only 500 copies printed, and included the poem Sea-Fever. For many who have an affinity with the sea or a thirst for poetry, the line “all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by” is probably the most well known. I think it is because it casts an endearing, simple need to be at one with the water.

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Hull Construction Beginnings

Jan 22nd, 2021 Jayne The Build

Scout is now more than just a name! This week the French welding factory started the construction of Scout’s super-sturdy aluminium hull. There are various stages to the metalwork welding phase, from plasma cutting, forming, assembly, plating, turning over, finishing and finally sanding - who knew! Once all the stages within the metalwork phase are complete, the hull will then be transferred to the Garcia shipyard in Cherbourg, France, to start on the follow-up phases of construction. We expect the metalwork phase to take about two months or so.