Voyage Around the World

May 21, 2010

Dr. Gus Wilson is an office client at our BusinesSuites Harborplace location in Baltimore, Maryland. Gus is on an annual sail voyage taking him and his wife, Helen, around the world. When their journey is complete we expect to have him back at the office as a client again. Below is the first excerpt from his voyage journal. There are several more to come.

December 2009. For a second winter we are back in London, after spending a rewarding 7 months here in 2008-9. We are enjoying building on what we learned during our first winter here. But London is another story. This letter will concentrate on some of the highlights of our 5 month sail to Scandinavia from May to October.

We left London May 19, swiftly riding the tide down the Thames to the Swale, where we stopped overnight. We still had a long way to go to clear the Thames Estuary. Catching the ebb tide the next morning, we zigzagged through the long narrow sand banks, and crossed into the Wallet, a passage leading to Harwich for a night’s stop. Continuing northward with the next day’s ebb tide, we reached Lowestoft, the easternmost point in England, and stayed there for a week of maintenance and exploratory walks. May 30 presented a good weather forecast, and we exited the harbor with the ebbing tidal current against the wind, which caused a nasty chop for a couple of miles. Soon we turned northward with the tidal flow and with winds on our beam, we could sail between the last of the Thames estuarine sand banks, passing giant wind farms on the sand banks. Fair winds allowed us to sail northward along the UK’s east coast, 336 miles to Peterhead, Scotland. Our two nights in that North Sea passage were never completely dark; The sea adopted pastel colors from the glowing horizon on its rippled surface. Pods of white-beaked dolphins joined us to play around Winds, and a pair of collared doves alighted on her spreaders and snuggled together for hours.

Peterhead provided an easy entrance into the harbor sheltered by outer and inner breakwaters, and a well-managed marina with floating docks in a picturesque setting. We spent 20 days there, renting a car to tour Scotland: Cliffside seabird rookeries, Loch Ness (a spectacular rainbow over the Urquhart Castle), the Culloden Battlefield-sad and moving, Balmoral Castle, the varied-colored Cairngorn National Park, a Scottish dance in Aberdeen with a friendly group, and more.

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