Savarna sailing blog

This blog records the travels of Savarna, a Hanse 531 yacht, following our taking delivery in June 2005 from the Hanse yard in Greifswald, on the Baltic. Having currently sailed as far as Turkey over the past four summers we are planning to head up to Istanbul, the Black Sea and then cruise the Cyclades Group during 2009, then complete the East Med Rally in April 2010 which will take us to Israel and Egypt followed by the ARC at the end of 2010 to get us to the Carribean then to New Zealand via the Panama and the Pacific.

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Savarna launched in Greifswald

Posted at 1:51 AM, Jun. 9, 2005

At 1700 hrs on Wednesday 8 June after over a year of planning and on a beautiful clear sunny and warm day, Savarna was finally launched at the Hanse yard in Greifswald. Pam did the traditional honours with both a speech and the first bottle of bubbles - it seemed a shame to deal the same way with the second bottle so we drank it.With only Tony, Leo, Keith and Pam present Tony decided that we would have to have another lauching party once we get back into Auckland,

She will be rigged up tomorrow and then the installation of electronics and other gear commences. We carried from Auckland 125 kg's of overweight luggage (courtesy of Qantas no excess baggage charges - the benefits of being a platinum member come through from time to time) including a 3.0 metre stainless radar post that Tony and Leo talked their way through German customs with after some difficulty. It is now time to get the gear onto the boat and unpack the three quarters of a ton of the gear we had shipped up.

Hopefully we will be out for sea trials by the weekend. (we need the sails to arive form Auckland though). The Hanse people continue to be very helpful and friendly and hosted a long and most emjoyable dinner for us in Greifswald tonight. The boat is right up to and even ahead of expectations as a number of improvements have been made since we first saw a sister boat in Sydney early 2004. She looks great with her dark blue anti-fouling and blue boot topping - a lot of boat!

We are looking forward to seeing family and friends aboard over the next year or so while we crusie the Med.

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