Boat Gen

Have you considered which type of boat you would like to buy? Of course this will depend on it's use. A sail boat, a power boat, a fishing boat and yes, maybe setting up home in a house boat. Will it be new or second hand, or are you thinking of renting a boat for the summer vacation?

All of this is the dream stage, and a beautiful dream it is, but to make the dream into a reality you must do some careful planing and research to avoid the pitfalls that could wreck this beautiful dream.

Perhaps you have gone ahead and purchased your boat. Have you made plans if you need to store it, indoors at a marina or maybe outdoors and covered up, are there any regulations that you should be aware of?

A good source of information you should find useful that offers free tips, tricks and resources for financing the boat of your dreams is at
Gen On Boating and will make sure your boating experience is a pleasure.

Everybody has their hero and one of my heroes is Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, who at the age of 68 and for the second time has completed a round the world solo yacht trip.

In 1969 Sir Robin made it into the history books by becoming the first person to sail single-handed around the world non-stop in his boat Suhaili.

In October, the Velux 5 Oceans race began the first of the three stages in Bilbao and almost immediately his boat Saga Insurance was damaged in bad weather in the Bay of Biscay. The journey was round Cape Hope and onto Fremantle in Australia (22 Oct-28 Dec 2006 12,000 miles). The second stage was from Fremantle sailing the Southern Ocean avoiding icebergs, rounding the notorious Cape Horn and up to Norfolk USA (14 Jan-30 March 14,200 miles). The third and final stage from Norfolk to Bilbao he suffered exhaustion and was hampered by light winds (15 April-4 May 3,200 miles).

Part of his diet consisted of his Aunt Aileen's (who is 100 years young) fruit cake washed down with the odd whisky.

My naval hero lives in Newton Abbot in Devon, England and is likely to be ranked fourth overall in the race won by Bernard Stamm from Switzerland.

Sir Robin accompanied by a floatilla of cheering fans jumped ashore punched the air and said "There is nothing wrong with me physically. I'm ready to take on Mike Tyson" He also stated that the lowest point was navigating the Beagle Channel off the coast of Argentina in bad weather and sailing so close to the coastline. During the darkest times in the voyage he took inspiration from British naval heroes Sir Frances Drake, Captain James Cook and Horatio Nelson.

Yes, a worthy hero aged 68, sailing these vast Oceans solo in an epic 159 day, 30,000 mile voyage, overcoming exhaustion and extreme weather.