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Saltwater&Diesel, Shrewsbury (2026)

09/10/2026

THIS IS WHY WE WANT TO EXPLORE THE WORLD. 🌍🐊⚓

Not for luxury marinas or tourist resorts.

I want to see the places where nature is still wild.

Places like Papua New Guinea, where saltwater crocodiles live in their natural habitat — among mangroves, rivers and remote tropical coastlines.

Imagine travelling thousands of miles aboard a little 1979 diesel workboat and seeing creatures like these living wild, rather than behind glass in a zoo.

That’s the sort of experience I’m looking forward to.

Of course, we’ll be keeping a very respectful distance. These are powerful, dangerous animals, and we’re visitors in their world.

For me, the journey isn’t just about reaching a destination. It’s about everything we might discover along the way.

That’s what Sophie-X is being prepared for. 🌊⚓

08/10/2026

535 LITRES OF DIESEL. ONE LITTLE BOAT. A VERY LONG JOURNEY. ⛽⚓🌍

Today, another two pieces of equipment arrived for Sophie-X — two manual fuel transfer pumps and a fuel-filtering funnel.

And there’s a good reason for them.

We’re preparing to travel thousands of miles aboard a 22-foot diesel workboat, and fuel management is going to be a huge part of making this journey possible.

Our planned fuel capacity is 535 litres.

That’s made up of:

* 14 × 30-litre portable diesel containers — 420 litres
* 1 × 25-litre container
* 1 × 90-litre fixed fuel tank

The idea is simple.

We’ll buy diesel along the route, taking advantage of cheaper fuel where possible, and carry our additional reserves in properly secured containers aboard Sophie-X.

As the main tank runs low, we’ll use our manual transfer pumps to move diesel from the portable containers into the fixed tank.

And before that fuel goes anywhere near the engine, we’ll pass it through our new filtering funnel to help remove water and dirt.

Because we won’t always know how clean the diesel is when buying it in small fishing harbours and remote ports.

A diesel engine needs three things: clean fuel, clean air and reliable cooling.

This set up doesn’t replace the inline fuel filters on board .

The BMC 1.8 is a wonderfully simple old engine, but contaminated diesel can stop even the best engine.

The two manual pumps also give us redundancy, without depending on electricity.

Of course, carrying this much fuel means thinking carefully about weight, stability, ventilation, secure storage and fire safety. Every container needs a proper place aboard.

We’re not trying to make Sophie-X into a floating fuel station.

We’re trying to give a small working boat the range and independence she’ll need for a very big adventure.

One more delivery. One more part of the expedition coming together. 🔧⚓

07/10/2026

AT NIGHT, THE LIGHTS TELL YOU WHAT’S OUT THERE. 🌙⚓

Before you can actually see a ship, you’ll often see its navigation lights.

Red = port side.
Green = starboard side.
White = masthead or stern lights, depending on where you’re viewing the vessel from.

The combination tells you much more.

See red and green together, and you’re generally looking towards the front of a vessel. See only its stern light, and you’re looking at it from behind. Fishing vessels, sailing boats, vessels at anchor and ships with restricted manoeuvrability all have their own light combinations.

Even the number and position of white masthead lights can help tell you something about the vessel you’re looking at.

For Sophie-X, knowing this matters. We’re only 22 feet long, sharing the sea with fishing boats and commercial ships hundreds of times our size.

AIS, GPS and electronic charts will help us — but they don’t replace looking outside and understanding what you’re seeing.

That’s why navigation lights form part of the COLREGs — the international rules designed to prevent collisions at sea.

See the lights. Read the situation. Know the rules. ⚓🌙

06/10/2026

YOU’LL BE ABLE TO WATCH SOPHIE-X CROSS THE WORLD. 🌍⚓

This screenshot might just look like hundreds of coloured triangles on a map.

But eventually, one of those little triangles will be Sophie-X.

One of the next jobs aboard is getting our AIS system installed, programmed and talking properly to the rest of the boat.

AIS — Automatic Identification System — broadcasts information about a vessel, including its identity, position, course and speed.

For us it’s another important piece of safety equipment. It helps us see other AIS-equipped vessels around us — and, just as importantly, helps them see a little 22-foot Sophie-X amongst some very big ships.

But there’s another side to it that I think is going to make this journey quite special.

You’ll be able to follow us.

Once Sophie-X is transmitting AIS, websites such as MarineTraffic⁠ can receive and display that information where their receiving network has coverage.

So when we finally leave Britain, you’ll be able to open the map, search for Sophie-X and see where we’ve got to.

Across the Channel.
Down the European coast.
Into the Mediterranean.
Through Suez.
Across the Indian Ocean.
And eventually into Southeast Asia.

There will inevitably be places offshore where shore-based tracking disappears for a while — that doesn’t mean Sophie-X has disappeared! It simply means our AIS transmission isn’t being picked up by a receiver feeding the tracking website.

For nearly a year we’ve been talking about this journey, buying parts, repairing things and planning routes.

One day there will actually be a little Sophie-X symbol moving across that map.

And you’ll be able to come along for the ride. 🌍⚓

05/10/2026

WHY DOES A 22-FOOT BOAT NEED FOUR BILGE PUMPS? ⚓🌊

Two more pieces of equipment arrived for Sophie-X today — automatic electric bilge pumps.

We already have two pumps aboard.

So why add another two?

Because at sea, water coming into the boat doesn’t make an appointment.

We can inspect the hull, replace hoses, check seacocks and prepare Sophie-X as carefully as possible, but we can never control everything that’s floating in the sea.

A partially submerged log. Fishing gear. Heavy debris. Something that’s broken away from another vessel. Even a lost shipping container can sit frighteningly low in the water and be extremely difficult to see, particularly at night.

And the danger doesn’t always come from outside.

A hose can split. A clamp can fail. A seacock can leak. A stern gland can develop a problem. Something in the cooling system can let go.

On a little 22-foot boat, water coming in faster than you can get it out becomes serious very quickly.

That’s why these two are automatic.

If water reaches them, they don’t need me to notice it first and switch them on. They start pumping.

And that’s important because I’ll eventually be spending long periods aboard Sophie-X alone. I could be navigating, working on the engine, sleeping — or dealing with whatever caused the water to come in in the first place.

So we’ll have four bilge pumps aboard, giving us redundancy rather than relying on one system to save the boat.

Will four pumps make Sophie-X unsinkable?

Absolutely not.

But preparation isn’t about pretending nothing will ever go wrong.

It’s about giving yourself more time and more options when something does.

For a boat we’re preparing to take thousands of miles from home, I’ll take every sensible layer of protection we can give the old girl. ⚓🔧🌊

04/10/2026

ANOTHER PIECE OF SOPHIE-X UNDERSTOOD. 🔧⚓

This afternoon I’ve been getting properly acquainted with Sophie-X’s old raw-water pump.

It would have been easy to look at it, see that it turns and put it back on the engine.

But that’s not how we’re preparing this boat.

So it came apart.

Impeller out. Shaft out. Gland opened. Everything inspected and measured so I could work out exactly what we need to rebuild and service it properly — including identifying the correct gland packing.

For anyone wondering what that little piece of packing actually does, it’s basically the seal around the rotating pump shaft. It allows the shaft to turn while keeping the seawater where it’s supposed to be.

It’s a tiny, inexpensive piece of material.

But it’s exactly these tiny, inexpensive pieces that can cause very expensive problems when you’re at sea.

That’s what this whole Sophie-X refit is becoming about.

The big jobs are obvious. Engine. Fuel. Cooling. Navigation.

But preparing an almost 50-year-old boat for thousands of miles also means finding all these little things, understanding what they do and knowing how to repair them.

This old pump doesn’t need throwing away simply because it’s old. It’s beautifully simple, rebuildable and, after this afternoon, I now know exactly what’s inside it.

One day I might have to take this pump apart again somewhere a very long way from Britain.

When that day comes, I don’t want it to be the first time I’ve seen inside it.

I want to already know.

Another system understood. Another few measurements written down. Another spare we know we need.

Another little step towards getting the old girl ready. 🔧⚓

30/09/2026

WHY NOT JUST MAKE IT FROM STAINLESS STEEL? 🔧⚓

These three pictures show another little Sophie-X problem that has turned into a much bigger lesson.

What you’re looking at is the cooler core and its old cast-iron end housings.

The core itself is worth saving.

The ends aren’t.

And naturally the question is: if we’re going to machine new ones ourselves, why not just make them from stainless steel?

Because on a boat, especially where seawater is involved, choosing the strongest-looking metal isn’t necessarily choosing the right metal.

Put different metals together in salty water and you can create a tiny electrical reaction between them. One metal effectively starts sacrificing itself to the other. That’s galvanic corrosion.

Stainless sounds perfect because it doesn’t rust like ordinary steel. But connected to the existing copper/brass-type cooler materials in seawater, it can create exactly the material combination we don’t want. It can also suffer its own problems in seawater, particularly where water becomes trapped or stagnant.

Cast iron has already shown us its weakness here. Given enough seawater, time and oxygen, it corrodes.

So we’re going back to the sort of material traditionally used for this job: a suitable marine brass/bronze-type alloy, correctly selected for seawater service.

It isn’t about making the prettiest part or simply using the hardest metal we can find.

It’s about making all the metals in the system live together.

That’s why we’re now talking directly to metal manufacturers and suppliers — including overseas — rather than simply buying another expensive finished “marine” part.

Find the correct material. Buy the raw stock. Machine the new ends ourselves.

Another small Sophie-X problem. Another bit of engineering learned.

And hopefully another component we won’t have to worry about when Britain is thousands of miles behind us. 🔧⚓

29/09/2026

ONE LITTLE BOAT. ONE SMALL PART. A WORLDWIDE SEARCH. 🌍🔧⚓

Today we found out that the end caps on Sophie-X’s replacement oil cooler simply aren’t up to the job.

So what do we do?

We start looking around the world.

Instead of accepting the premium price attached to a finished “marine” component, we’re going directly to the people who actually manufacture and supply bronze.

We’re reaching out to manufacturers and suppliers across continents — including India — looking for the correct material at the right specification and a sensible price.

Because we don’t necessarily need somebody to sell us the finished part.

We can machine that ourselves.

All we need is the right material.

And I love this side of the project.

Somewhere thousands of miles away, there could be a bronze manufacturer making exactly what we need. A few emails, some drawings and measurements later, a piece of that material could end up on a lathe in our workshop — and eventually become part of Sophie-X.

That’s what a working-man’s expedition sometimes looks like.

Not opening a yacht catalogue and buying the most expensive solution.

Research. Ask questions. Look further afield. Find the people who actually make the stuff. Then use the skills and equipment we’ve already got.

We’re preparing an almost 50-year-old boat to travel halfway around the world.

It seems fitting that some of the solutions might come from halfway around the world too. 🌍

The search for Sophie-X’s new bronze starts now. 🔧⚓

27/09/2026

TRUST NOTHING UNTIL YOU’VE CHECKED IT. 🔧⚓

Another piece of Sophie-X came across the workbench today — the replacement oil cooler.

At first glance, it looked absolutely fine.

Take it apart and look properly, though, and we found a stripped thread in the housing.

Nothing catastrophic. It’s repairable, and everything else we’ve inspected so far looks good.

But this is exactly why I’m doing things this way.

When you’re preparing a nearly 50-year-old boat to carry you thousands of miles, you don’t want to discover the weak points when you’re already at sea.

Every component we can inspect now gets inspected. Every problem we can find now gets dealt with now.

It takes time. Most of it isn’t glamorous. But every time I strip something down, I understand Sophie-X a little better.

And somewhere a long way from home, that knowledge might be more valuable than any spare part I can carry.

Find it here. Fix it here. Trust it out there. ⚓

Saltwater&Diesel

09/10/2026

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07/10/2026

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