We bought Lobo in May 2002 from John and Mo LAW in Stranraer, Scotland.

She was a Bermudan sloop and had given many years of sterling service but Mo no longer sailed and John, who was 79, was finding that 11 and a half ton of concrete boat was a little hard to handle now.

We left her in Stranraer that summer and had some good sailing on the west coast including visits to Carrickfergus in Northern Ireland, Arran and Oban.

We brought her home to Sunderland via the Caledonian Canal in September of 2002 and lifted her out for the winter. We stripped and repaired her hull and began to prepare for the BIG change - from a bermudan sloop to a junk rigged schooner.

The rig was 30 years old and would have needed replacing in any case. We had decided that for short-handed sailing we needed a rig that was easily handled with minimum effort so decide to go junk!

Most of the summer of 2003 was spent making the masts and sails

We finally had our first sail as a junk on the 24th August 2003, with the help of good friends Graham and Helen Jewitt, junk rig experts.  There are a lot of pieces of string to get used to! It felt wonderful after all those months of work.  And she actually sailed to windward!!  (For all you non-sailing friends, the majority of sailors don’t quite understand the junk rig and think that because the sails don’t take up the ‘right shape’ they won’t sail into the wind. We find that she does go to windward all right, not as fast as the bermudan rig, but she certainly points higher into the wind, so we can sail closer to it).

From then until now we have been ripping out and replacing the interior. For a 39 foot boat there wasn’t a great deal of room for storage so we decided to almost rebuild everything to make as much space as we could.  There were only two bunks in the saloon and a pullout double in the fore cabin so we took out bulkheads and fittings and started rebuilding everything. We now still have only two bunks in the saloon but have a permanent double berth up front.  We have made new lockers all over the boat and are now trying to fit everything we have brought into them. We have read that first-timers tend to bring too much and we certainly have!!! 

We have bought so much new equipment, from navigation instruments to a life raft and a wood-burning stove. We couldn’t have afforded to buy everything at once but have managed to slowly equip ourselves and we now have a  full complement of blue water cruising essentials. The only thing we haven’t got is a water maker. We think we can manage with the tankage we have as there are only the two of us and apart from that, water makers take up quite a lot of space and cost quite a lot of money!!

We have attended all sorts of courses including a First Aid course, a Sea Survival course, and an amateur radio course.

We could not have reached this stage without lots of help and encouragement from all sorts of people and we would like to thank everyone for the many kind acts of help and advice and a few donations we have been lucky enough to receive.  You know who you are!

We must mention one special person who has been with us through thick and thin and who has used his knowledge and enthusiasm in all kinds of ways.  From helping to remove 30 years of paint from the hull in the early days, to filming the entire mast and sail builds and using his electronic expertise to magic up a watch timer (more about that later) Ken Halliday has been a boon We couldn’t have done it without you Ken. Thanks.