THIRTY one members of Weir Quay Sailing Club gathered at Bere Ferrers Social Club last month, to hear two club members from Bere Alston describe the culmination of a three year, 5,000 mile voyage around northern Europe.

Dudley Lean, aged 73, a retired auto industry designer who worked for Ford, and his wife Pat, in her late fifties and a former architect, set out in 2007 in their yacht Onvi Eowyn Too to sail across the North Sea to Holland and then via canals to the Baltic.

The cruise followed an eight-year voyage around the Mediterranean on their original 'Eowyn' — a 44ft steel yacht — which was unfortunately run down by a French fishing boat while they were on their way back across the English Channel.

Their new boat has opened up a different world of sailing: she is 36ft long, built of aluminium with a lifting keel, allowing access to water only two feet deep.

Collected near Marseilles in the South of France, the couple brought her home via shallow Canal du Midi in the summer of 2006, crossing France below the Pyrenees, travelling up to Bordeaux and into the Bay of Biscay, then back to the UK.

The 2007 plan was to cross Holland and into the Baltic Sea via the Kiel Canal.

Dreadful weather, however, allowed them to take a full six months to cruise through the canal system from Vlissingen, a channel port, through to Delfzijl on the Eems River, continuing in 2008 through the Kiel Canal into the Baltic.

That year was spent cruising the Danish Island, hopping over to Germany to shop and visit the cities of Lubeck and Wismar.

They circumnavigated the major Danish islands of Sjaelland and Funen, the small isles to the north and south, then headed to the Jutland Peninsula and down to Middlefart for the winter.

Taking off from there in May 2009, they travelled back to Germany for supplies then sailed to Sweden, heading north through the Kalmar Sound into force six head winds, and up to Stockholm.

The lifting keel permits access to anchorages that other boats cannot get into, such as the moat at Kalmar Castle, and parts of Lake Malaren, an enormous body of water with locks at each end, allowing a short cut into Stockholm.

In the middle of June they spent a sun-filled week cruising this spectacular and sheltered area of thousands of stunning islands: when mid-summer came, so did the drenching constant rain.

After Stockholm came the Gota Canal, 58 locks and 190km of spectacular scenery and exciting travel through the heart of Sweden.

This canal only took them to the centre of the country, with two massive lakes, the Trollhatten Canal and on from Lake Vanern to the west coast at Goteborg.

At Trollhatten itself they saw the two previous lock systems that quickly became redundant as boats became bigger.

They found this also with the Gota Canal locks as leisure craft become wider — the increasing width of the boats ensures a tight fit with two abreast.

They exited through the busy Goteborg port, around the archepelago islands on the west coast, which in August became rough and windy, back over to Denmark and through the northern cut of the Limfjord past the modern and antique city of Aalborg, where they stopped to dismantle a broken forestay.

They holed up at Lemvig, not only to await the Queen's visit, but to sit out ten days of excessively bad weather in the German Bight.

They set up a jury rig for the broken rigging, with the help of new friends that are always quickly made in this type of lifestyle, before taking off for a slow journey home via the Dutch canals and Amsterdam.

The couple set off into F7 gales approaching the Thames Estuary, and then enjoyed a luxuriously slow trip along the south coast and back up the River Tamar to Weir Quay.

Pat said: 'All in, we did a trip of more than 5,000 nautical miles, 18 travelling months, uncountable number of islands, occasional sun and a lot of rain.

'We were frozen in on the canal at Delfzijl, almost drowned on the Gota Canal, Sweden, baked on the Kiel Canal and roasted in Stockholm!'

The nautical couple, however, do not plan to be 'landlubbers' for too long as the call of the sea is again proving irresistible — they now plan an adventure to Ireland next year.