Introduction

 

 Olieta - Voyages and Life on our Dufour 425

 

Welcome to our time sailing and living on Olieta - Our Dufour 425 Grand Large.

 

We are Mike and Carol Perry.

We are at the start of what is to us a challenge, an adventure, a trip we never dreamt that we would make.

I'm Mike and I have grown up with boats. From the age of 8 or 9 I was introduced to sailing by my father and now as I approach 70 I can only thank him for the pleasure this sport has given me. I started off in a canvas canoe but this soon gave way to participating in sailing dinghies. During my youth I developed my sailing and represented my school at sailing matches and then went on to compete nationally in a range of dinghies. I have now more or less retired from racing dinghies and taken to larger sailing yachts. My current boat is a Dufour 425 Grand Large called Olieta.

My partner and wife is Carol whom I introduced to sailing back in 1974 getting her very cold and wet racing my National 12 dinghy. This she was not overly keen on! but Carol did not hold me back from sailing and some 19 years later we tried out sailing yachts in the Mediterranean; this was much more to her liking.

Olieta is our summer home. She is a Dufour 425 GL built in 2007 and launched in 2008 and spent her first 4 years around Malta and Italy. She was then shipped to Ipswich in the UK where she stayed until I purchased her in October 2019.

So welcome to our blog. We hope that you enjoy this story of our voyage.