Blue Box Sailing Blog

Blue Box Sailing featured on Filemaker

It you'd like to hear a bit more about how it's all done in the office here, why not check out our featured case study on Filemaker's website!  As an added bonus visit thefilemakers.com where they are giving away an Ocean Race Yacht Experience for 2 to celebrate the new case study.

Round the Island trip

This weather is amazing. We can remember an April not so long ago when we were brushing snow off the deck of the Clipper before a trip...  Here's a photo from the deck of Whitbread 60 Blueprint as we reached up the North Channel touching 13.6 knots in 15 knots of wind.

First trip of the year!

This weekend was a cracking weekend for sailing - and what a great weekend for our first trips with customers in 2011! With plenty of wind and some great crews it was fantastic to be back in action taking people sailing again. Check out the pic taken on Sunday as we beat back past Cowes in a building 20ks of wind. Happy days...

Blue Box Sailing on the BBC

Check out Blue Box Sailing's Whitbread 60 Blueprint featured on BBC One's Country Tracks which went out on Sunday morning. If you missed it, see it again on the BBC iplayer - we're first on and again at about 11 minutes in. 

Watch it on the iplayer here

Let us know what you think!

Whitbread 60 Blueprint is launched!

Whitbread 60 Blueprint is back in the water and now both boats are on their new pontoon on the River Hamble. Plenty to do to get the boats ready for sailing, including stepping the Whitbread's mast on Friday, so let's hope this sunny Spring weather holds out!

Clipper 60 Taeping is launched!

The refit season is over and the boats are going back in the water! Today we launched Clipper 60 Taeping and tomorrow is the turn of Whitbread 60 Blueprint, then it's a month of test sailing and trials before we go commercial with our first trip of the season on the 2nd of April. 

Fancy a great day out on the water? Check out our webpage for summer sailing dates. 

Whitbread 60 Blueprint is out of the water

Blueprint was lifted out of the water on Thursday, ready to start the shoreside element of her winter refit.  We will be uploading time lapse movies keeping you up to date with the refit over the next few weeks.  Check out the first footage of the Whitbread's rig and then the hull being lifted, before all the rods are stripped off the rig for storage.  You can also see the boat team getting very wet and as it rained nearly continually through Thursday and Friday when this was shot!

 

If you can't see the embedded movie above click here to view it directly on youtube.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

Well, the snow eventually arrived. The boats are covered and ice has stopped play on any outside refit work. It's very nice to look at, but perhaps better on a Christmas card. We're now over the snow and would like it to go away so we can get on!

Clipper lifted out for the Winter

Today the Clipper was lifted out of the water for her Winter refit, just as the snow arrived. We're still much better off than most of the UK with only a light scattering of snow, but it's still cold when you're working outside all day! 

Only 23 days of Christmas shopping left - don't forget to book your sailing experience for next year! The Round the Island Experience aboard the Clipper 60 has sold out once already for the season, so we've added more dates to meet demand - check out the Round the Island Experience dates here.

Last sail of the season

Saturday was the last sail of 2010 - with both boats now beginning their refits. The Clipper is already at HYS and ready for her lift out and the Whitbread's deck is bare as we are getting her ready for a re-paint and have taken all the deck fittings off. The lovely crisp weather as so far been kind to us with no sign of snow yet, but we're sure it's only a matter of time! 

Only 18 weeks until the 2011 sailing season starts!