In what I sincerely hope is not a trend, two of my favourite sailing YouTube couples have recently split up, in both cases, the main cause appeared to be
a suddenly renewed sense of daughterly duty.

Wildlings Sailing’s Nadiyana has returned to her family in China, while Bums on a Boat’s Michal’s gone to help with the harvest on the family farm and decided to stay.

The show will go on without them, but will surely be all the poorer for it, as both contributed immensely to the appeal of their respective channels.

Channel Hopping: Wonderful Wharram Women

Our resident YouTube fanatic marvels at the generations of women who have crossed (and continue to cross) oceans on Wharram…

Channel Hopping: Sailing La Vagabonde in Svalbard

Our resident YouTube aficionado catches up with Sailing La Vagabond to see why they’ve managed to maintain their seemingly unassailable…

Mark and Nadiyana have sold their Sailcraft 35ft Cherokee catamaran to a cruising buddy and split the proceeds, with Mark getting both the dog and the channel.

Joel’s not been so lucky on the fur baby custody front (the dog is likely to be happier on a farm), but he’s managed to keep their 1974 Carter 33 and the channel, which he briefly rebranded as Yahoel Yah, before regretting it and reverting to the old name.

Let’s just say, outwardly at least, Mark appears to be handling the split with a bit more grace than Joel.

Mark’s renamed his channel Wilding Sailing, although Wildling Seeks Boat might be more accurate, as recent episodes follow Mark as he traverses the UK (and even Costa Rica) in search of his next blue water cruiser.

The fun of these episodes is the suspense around whether he will buy each boat under consideration, and the advice from his commenters, while wildly varying in soundness, is frequently entertaining.

Wharram advice

Having developed a passion of for Wharram catamarans, he goes in search of knowledge and advice from a master, and Hanneke Boon, the longtime
design partner of James Wharram, more than delivers, setting him up to be better able to judge the original build quality and current condition of any
Wharram (or similar epoxy ply construction boats) he might consider.

Hanneke mentions in passing a series of videos she has produced about the techniques Wharram Designs employs in their own builds.

These are well worth seeking out as they have lots of invaluable advice for anyone who works with epoxy, whether making neat fillets, bonding in
bulkheads or sheathing hull or deck structures.

In the meantime, here’s hoping both Mark and Joel get back onto the ocean soon, as epoxy won’t mend a broken heart.