Baremka is a Dufour 34. She was built in 1974 in La Rochelle, France and has toured Europe with her previous owners and has since begun another expedition with us!
Why is she called "Baremka"?
When we bought her in May 2017, she was already called Baremka and had had the name for the previous two owners. As you might have guessed, it was made especially for her!
The owner that named her had family members called Barbara, Emma and Karen. He took the first letters of each and made up a new name to suit him: BARbara, EMma and KAren… BarEmKa… Baremka!
We have an Emma (one of my middle names) and a Karen (Dave’s Mum) but no Barbara. We have stuck with the name so far but have been dreaming up new names since before we even bought her!
A re-naming is on the cards at some point, but to what? You’ll have to wait and see!
Tell me some specs...
When searching for boats, we decided that safety was high up on our list of priorities. Having read so many stories about boats losing their rudders and the owners having to abandon their homes, we were very keen to find a boat with a skeg rudder… and we did!
Age: Built in 1974 (She’s 45 this year! [2019])
Designer: Michel Dufour
Built: Dufour (La Rochelle, France)
Hull Type: Fin Keel with a Skeg Rudder
Rig: Masthead Sloop
Overall Length: 33.58′ / 10.24m
Waterline Length: 25.42′ / 7.75m
Beam: 10.75′ / 3.28m
Draft: 5.82′ / 1.77m
Displacement: 11400 lbs / 5171 kg
Sail Area: 516 ft2 / 47.94 m2
Ballast (Keel Weight): 4000 lbs / 1814 kg
Interior Headroom: 2.0m (saloon), 1.92m (galley)
Engine: Beta 28 (2005)
Carl's Sail Calculator
Dave has found a Sail Calculator where you can input the spec of a boat and it will work out the hull speed, motion comfort rating, capsize ratio etc of a boat. We found it really interesting to input our figures to see how we faired and it cemeted the fact that we bought a good boat for crusing that would look after us.
Clicking on each box gives you an explanation for what the figures mean. See what you think of our results!
Why don’t you try and put your boat’s figures in to see how she does?
Show me some pictures!
Enough of the numbers! Let’s take a closer look at her so you can see where we live.
Here she is! Our new home where we’ve lived since the end May / beginning of June 2017.
Baremka has taken us safely down the East coast of Britain, across the North Sea and up the North Sea canal to Amsterdam and the Markenmeer before heading back out to follow the Dutch coast South. From there, she took us on a tour of the North and North West coast of France before returning to Jersey for Winter 2017.
In May 2018, we brought her across the English Channel to Cornwall. We have lots of ideas of where to go to next but you’ll have to wait and see where we end up going.
This is the ‘living / dining room’ on our boat looking forwards.
The sofa on the starboard (right) side can be used as a single bunk if needed.
The sofa on the port (left) side can be made into a small double bed (it’s basically a large single…it’s a definite squeeze for two!) by adding in the extra large cushion shown immediately to the left of the table.
You can remove the back of each sofa to give you a bit more room on each bunk!
This is another view of our living area but this time looking aft (towards the back of the boat).
We have a large table that can be pulled up, one side at a time as needed.
There is lots of storage around in the cupboards behind the sofas, the space under the windows, under the seats and in the table.
We have two 125 litre flexible water containers under each long section of seat that we fill from outside.
Here is our galley (kitchen).
Compared to some other boats I’ve seen, we have quite a lot of space in here and again, plenty of storage.
Going clockwise started from the left we have a sink, a top down fridge, a top down cupboard next to the fridge, a Plastimo Neptune 2000 gimballed gas cooker (these things last forever), another top down cupboard in the far right hand corner that reaches the floor and a load of workspace.
Underneath the sink there is a cupboard. There is a small cupboard underneath the cooker and then a large double door cupboard underneath all the workspace. There is also space behind two sliding windows above the cooker and a little cubby to the left (above the fridge.)
We have two taps, one freshwater, one seawater. They are both operated with a foot pump and it’s cold water only.
On the starboard side of the boat (opposite the galley) we have a good sized chart table with an opening top and a cupboard underneath.
Going aft (to the right of the picture), we have a sea berth.
The sea berth goes nearly all the way to the back of the boat and makes for excellent storage for any large things that we prefer to keep inside and not in the lockers outside.
Above the sea berth is a little cubby where we keep our lifejackets when they are not in use.
Just to the right of the window we have one of our electrical switchboards which controls the lights and some of the instruments.
This is our heads (marine speak for toilet!).
It has the classic European look with a bright red sink… unusual to start with but you soon get used to the colour.
We have a holding tank under the front berth with a macerator attached which means we can use it in port then empty it when we are the required distance offshore.
Lots of cupboard space again in here: Two large cupboards and a large open space below that.
The freshwater tap is operated by foot pump and again it’s just cold water. If we want a shower then we can either rig up a solar shower or bring our large green tub in, fill it up with warm water and then stand in it and be creative with a jug.
Life is always fun on a boat… and it makes you REALLY appreciate a good hot shower when you find one!
Here’s another view of our chart table.
Inside there are numerous charts and all sorts of other bits and bobs that come in handy for navigating.
Here is a list of the equipment we have on board at the chart table: VHF radio, B&G (Brookes and Gatehouse) Hornet 4 Sailing Monitor which shows us the power we have in our batteries and records the distance we’ve travelled as a log.
A B&G Hecta Depth Monitor which is self explanatory!
We also have a NASA Radiotelex Weatherman for the weather forecast.
An EPIRB, an APELCO, the control panel for the electrical instruments and a retro Sony tape player with speakers throughout the boat. Needless to say, that hasn’t had any use yet so far!
At the bow (front) of the boat, we have our one and only bedroom.
It’s a V-berth which basically means we kick each others feet all night long.
Although we have plenty of head space (the width at the top is the same length as a king size bed!), it just tapers off the closer you get to the bow.
Under our heads, we have two deep, top-opening lockers and under our legs we have the holding tank.
Moving higher, we both have storage space each side behind the wooden planks where we put all kinds of stuff that won’t fit anywhere else.
This was taken sitting on our bunk looking aft (backwards).
As you can see, we have lots of width at our head end.
We both have little reading lights that we fitted with energy saving lightbulbs over the winter.
The toilet door becomes the bedroom door but we rarely bother closing it.
You can just see Robyn’s wardrobe on the left and the starboard side sofa beyond that.
We only use this bedroom when we’re in port, on a mooring ball or in a calm anchorage. When we’re underway or in a nasty anchorage it’s not a good place to be as it can get very uncomfortable!
I took this picture sitting on the bed looking aft.
We have the wardrobe on the left of the picture (starboard side of the boat), the heads (toilet) is on the right of the picture behind the door (port side) and the living area in front of me.
We’ve put ‘carpet’ (non-slip bathroom mats!) on the floor so Scrappy is able to happily run and jump up and down the boat without us worrying about him slipping or his claws on the wooden floor.
We have another door (shown folded on the right side of the picture) that can close to make the living room a bit more snug or give whoever is using the toilet privacy when our bedroom door is closed!
We are lucky enough to have a boat with a decent amount of storage space for clothes.
Although Dave regularly says that the wardrobe is mine… the reality is that I have the top two cubby holes for my main clothes and three small baskets at the top for other bits and pieces!
We share the hanging space in the wardrobe for coats and dry wet weather gear, put all our gloves, hats and scarves in the bottom cubby hole and then towels etc in the rest of the space up the top.
Dave keeps all his clothes in the space below the window on the starboard side of the living room.
This is our tender.
She can carry three people (or two people, Scrappy and shopping or even four people (and Scrappy!) at a push for short trips!)
We have oars on her at all times (after we had the fun experience of drifting away from land when our engine wouldn’t start once…) and a Yamaha 2.5 hp four-stroke outboard engine. It’s safe to say we have a pretty slow top speed!
She’s basically our car now we live aboard and we use her to go exploring, fishing and to get ashore when we have jobs that need doing on land.
As we’re now out on a mooring ball or anchoring most of the time, we’d be stuck without her!
Watch Our Video Tour
If pictures say a thousand words then what does a video say?
We made a walkthrough of Baremka so you could get a real feel of what it’s like to live on a boat. She really is a tiny home but Baremka was perfect for us when we began our journey back in 2017. Come onboard and take a closer look!
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