2012 First Blog from Holland

Dear Family and Friends

I bet you never expected to hear me say that it is good to be back in Holland!! But it is! We have been staying with Marian and John Berg in their lovely home in Driebergen and having a wonderful time. They have driven us around, showing us the sights and treating us royally to wonderful home cooked meals. I’ve discovered that the secret to eating well in Holland is to stay with good cooks – both Marian and John share cooking duties – and to have them take you to the good restaurants. We had a great lunch in a Utrecht bakery that also served meals down in a cave at canal level with wonderful very old brick arched ceilings and even better food. Had the best quiche EVER!

We had a bright sunny day while they toured us around the countryside including a really fun trip to Zaanse Schans, an outdoor museum with typical Dutch houses that are actually occupied, several windmills all producing different products – ground spices, peanut butter, lumber – and a few businesses from more than a century ago. Even had a wooden shoe making shop! Phil and Marian chased each other on stilts and challenged each other at several other children’s games. Too funny!

Marian and John Berg                           

                               Phil and Marian chasing each other

   Dutch House - part of living museum    

                              Working windmills

Grinding spices

Marian also took us to the lovely Keukenhof Gardens to see the tulips and all the other spring flowers. It was everything I had expected from researching it and more. Took 200 pictures on my fabulous new SLR digital Nikon that I got for my birthday last year. It was so good to spend time with them again – Marian absolutely loves to take the mickey out of Phil – he has met his match!

   Keukenhof Gardens                              

                             Keukenhof Gardens

We also met up with Arthur and Diana Dixon – our Australian friends who we met in Holland the first year we were there. Was really nice to see them again there and then had a meal with them later in Rotterdam where they keep their boat. Arthur and Diana were so helpful that first year when we didn’t know our a** from a tea kettle. Lots of good advice that we still use – except for the one to stay in Holland and not go south. Sorry guys but the Midi is the dream!!

Then we were off to Rotterdam to meet Robert and Christa Bouman who toured us around South Holland, Zeeland and Delta works that hold back the North Sea/Atlantic. Amazing, amazing engineering. When you think that much of Holland is man-made and under sea level, you get an appreciation for their accomplishments. Wow! The surprise of the day was Robert’s son Raymond, a KLM pilot, taking them up in a little 4-seater to get a view from the sky. Phil actually got to fly the plane for a short time – he loved it!! He also got a chance to see all the dams and dykes from the air. I stayed on the ground – thank you very much – and took pictures of the takeoff and landing.

    Flying Phil                                 

                             Delta works from the air

  Safely on the ground                             

                                       Robert and Christa

Robert also showed us his dental lab where he employs 11 other technicians. Beautiful well equipped lab - we were very impressed. We then went back to their lovely condo right on the Oude Maas where we could watch the barges making their way to and from the seaport. What a great view from their condo looking across to the skyline of Rotterdam. And another good home cooked meal!

We are very fortunate to have met and made such good Dutch and Australian friends that we love to spend time with. Our Dutch friends are so hospitable and generous – we can only hope that they visit us on Vancouver Island soon so that we can reciprocate.

It was hard to leave Holland but France beckoned and we took the Thalys fast train to Paris where we changed to the SNCF local to Migennes and the boat. While the weather hasn’t been great – I had to go out and buy a jacket – we look forward to better weather as we head south. I’m sure next month I’ll be complaining because it’s too hot.

And now for the Canadian news as I didn’t have time to get an email out before we left – busy, busy, busy. Phil was asked to go back and teach next year at NAIT and he agreed to one more year. They didn’t even care that he wouldn’t be back until almost the end of October. The students were ecstatic and we are really glad to be spending more time with the ‘kids’ and our Edmonton buddies. But next June – for sure!!! – we are heading home to Nanaimo.  The golf course and Island friends beckon.

So ends the first 2012 blog – we are really excited about all we’ll see and do this year. Hope you keep reading and do stay in touch. We love to hear from you. ( chutneycoss@gmail.com )

Love to all – The Master Mariner and the Galley Slave

Final Blog for 2011

Dear Family and Friends

After 825.1 kms and 246 locks later, we are ready to come home. Mind you, home is a moving target – literally - as we will still be on the move for the next 24 months. So I guess home is where we lay our head at any given moment.    

Auxerre was everything we had hoped and more.  The views from the mooring were amazing. As I lay in bed, I looked out the aft cabin window and there was l’Abbaye de Saint-Germain outlined against the evening sky, beautifully lit to show off it’s amazing architecture. As if that wasn’t enough we also had a front row view of the Tour St Jean, la cathédrale Saint-Étienne and l’élgise  Saint-Pierre-en-Vallée. Under the Abbaye is an amazing crypt which shows the barrel-vaulted naves dating back to the Carolingian times and a deep burial vault where Saint Germain was enshrined. The 15^th century clock tower (La tour de l’Horlage) shows the movements of the sun and moon on one side and the hours on the other. The half-timbered houses are in amazing condition partly because the town centre has been classified as a protected area.

Auxerre Abbey and Tower

Not exactly to standard housing code!!

So there we were thinking we had this whole cruising business down pat. Phil has been handling the boat really well with only a very few bumps here and there. My job is to throw the ropes, jump off the boat to secure us to the bollards or cleats and navigate. So it came as a surprise when a lady lockkeeper started yelling at me in one of the locks. I couldn’t understand what she was on about - as far as I was concerned all was well – I had secured the boat as Phil taught me. Another boater translated and after discontinuing my rude gestures with the one hand I placed the rope as she directed. Oops – I see what she means. This is a better way to place the rope so that I could hold the boat much easier against the surge of water as the lock fills up. Who knew? The Captain doesn’t know everything! Quite a revelation for both of us.

However...... if you use the same technique when descending the lock and the ropes are wet , they can easily become jammed. By the time one gets the rope free from the cleat, the boat is about a foot above the water level and drops back down with an almighty splash. I won’t reveal who the idiot was that resulted in this dangerous situation but I can promise that she’s never going to do that again!!!!

The Canal de Nivernais is as pretty and pleasing as everything we’ve read and been told. The countryside opens up so we can see the fields and forests. There are amazing chateaus, and little villages - even an amazing fortified farm built probably in the 15^th century. Some of the walls around the farm fields are crumbling but the farm buildings are in amazing condition.

First glimpse of the Canal du Nivernais

Chateau for 2 ??!! Owned by a doctor and his wife.

Field of beautiful sunflowers

Burgundian architecture

We have eaten at two Michelin recommended restaurants. In Accolay – a little village that doesn’t even have an épicerie – has this wonderful restaurant with great food. They seated us in the garden – lovely. In our enthusiasm we shared a full bottle of wine between us. The walk home wasn’t exactly steady and I didn’t dare close my eyes until I’d sobered up – the world was spinning. The second was in Clamecy. We were wandering the town looking for a place to eat and saw this little tiny restaurant with a great gardened terrace. It only seats 20 people and they already had reservations for 19 but they took pity on us and let us in. Once again great food and really good local wine, which we shared with the New Zealanders and Aussies at the next table. The walk back to the boat was much steadier!

Michelin star restaurant in Clamecy

Ancient community wash house

Mooring along the canal for lunch near Vaux

 It has been the best cruising year to date. That being said, we are looking forward to getting home – reconnecting with family and friends. I will be in Nanaimo from the 9^th to the 15^th of August - my Mom’s funeral is on the 11^th. Dad is not doing well – his cancer has spread and he fell and broke his hip but amazingly he fights on to recover.  We’ve rented a lovely condo in Edmonton with a view over the river valley and Phil is keen to get back to NAIT for the fall semester. So that’s all for this year! See you next May when we begin our cruise to the south of France. Yippee!

Love to all – Captain Doesn’t Know Everything and the Matelot (French for deckhand extraordinaire)

Just Hanging Around

Dear Family and Friends

What an interesting few weeks! Aunt Jean and Uncle Owen got a very good sense of the joys and minor difficulties that are part of cruising. It was hard to leave Moret-sur-Loing – what a beautiful little village – but we wanted to take them to Auxerre if possible before they had to get back to Paris to fly home.

At Montereau-Fault-Yonne we left the Seine and joined the Yonne River which joins the Canal du Nivernais at Auxerre. Sens was a lovely city (despite the lack of promised water at the mooring) and surprising architecture. I had always associated half-timbered (Tudor) houses with England but they are predominant in France as well in towns and villages that would have been established in the same century.  There was a whole street of these buildings that have kept their character on the upper floors but now house shops on the bottom floor.

Beautiful “Tudor” buildings with shops below

 It was at Sens that we were able to introduce Jean and Owen to crepes. Actually it was galettes which are savoury crepes made from buckwheat. Crepes refer to the sweet dessert with ice cream or other toppings. Galettes have all kinds of fillings from salmon (fresh or smoked), eggs, cheese, beef or pork – name your preference. We were so full from lunch that we had a very Canadian supper – peanut butter and jam on baguettes!

The bonus in Sens was seeing the Canadian flag flying from a lovely big boat. Two Montrealers live full time on their boat in France and travel as their fancy takes them. They have a good size boat with all mod-coms including heat, air conditioning and washing machine!!

The Montrealers

Amazingly the very next day we met another Canadian family in Joigny who had rented a boat for 10 days. Typical Canadian family. The parents were from Scarborough, one son and wife from Winnipeg and one son from Vancouver. He left a day early to get home for a Canucks game –sadly in vain. From the past few years when we have seen only 3 Canadians, we now see them more frequently. Some are boat owners and some are renters. We are now in an area with more canals branching off the rivers - canals of Bourgogne, Nivernais, Loing, Briare, etc are attractive wine-growing areas to visit. In fact yesterday, in Brienon-sur-Armançon we met 2 Toronto couples (one of whom was elderly and handicapped) who arrived to cruise for the next 10 days (one way) along the Canal de Bourgogne. Phil and I were a little concerned as they have no experience with cruising and the wind is currently pretty wicked. Rental boats are light (not heavy steel) and get pushed around by the wind which can be hard to handle especially in the locks. We are unashamedly proud of how well we now handle the boat in all conditions! And of course we had 2 extra pair of hands to help with ropes!

Jean took a turn at the wheel

Enjoying the French countryside

Joigny was a great moorage (no promised showers of course!) and a great town. Built on a hillside, the layers of roofs remind us of Tuscan hilltop villages.

Joigny from the moorage

More half-timbered houses leaning into the alleys (or ruelles as they are called) and 3 wonderful churches. We marvelled that such a small town could support three churches one of which was pretty magisterial. We found a brasserie with a very funny landlord that where we had afternoon drinks and then lunch the next day. I ordered a local sausage that tasted very good until I looked down and saw what was obviously the tip of a nose – hairs and all. While I courageously controlled the urge to heave, I tucked the rest of it under a lettuce leaf so I wouldn’t have to look at it. I shudder just writing about it!

The carvings on this Joigny house were amazing

Lunch with Jean and Owen in Joigny

Our funny brasserie host (just kidding)

Sadly Joigny was also where we had to say good-bye to Jean and Owen as they caught the train back to Paris to fly home. We didn’t make it to Auxerre with them but maybe they’ll come back another year and visit it. In the meantime when we finally get there we’ll share photos of what they missed. We expect it to be a highlight of this year’s cruising from everything we seen and read.

That’s not to say that we haven’t had our adventures these past weeks. Soon after leaving Pont à Bar, Phil noticed that the light on the battery charger wasn’t lit. We weren’t too worried as we were pretty much moving every day which means the battery is charging as we cruise.  As mentioned in the last blog, Phil and Simon discovered that it was fried. Now what to do? We then phoned Simon Evans who owns the boatyard where Calypso will spend the winter and he will order us a new one. In the meantime we are just hanging around waiting until he tells us that it is time to go back to Migennes to have it installed.

We thought that as long as Migennes was at the entrance to the Canal de Bourgogne, we might as well venture down it. Plan A for 2011 had us going down the Bourgogne until we discovered it was 242 kms with 189 locks! No thanks – this is supposed to be fun not hard work! We met an Australian couple who came from the other end. They said it was fun at first but then it was a case of ‘when will it end?’ They also cautioned us about the low water mark and the resulting weed problem. Their prop and bow thrusters were so fouled, it took them an hour to go 200 metres! We should have listened!!

Entrance to the Canal de Bourgogne

Brienon-sur-Armançon was our first stop and we were moored alongside the bowling (petanque) pitch. It was fun watching them play. Like curling on steroids. Some of the players were very good.

Playing petanque (or boulles)

Then we headed for St Florentin. The quai was full so we had to reverse in at the end of the mooring area. Sadly, it was full of weeds. The prop and bow thrusters got so jammed with weeds that we actually had to be hauled in using ropes to position us. Not fun!!! But we did meet a lovely couple from Portland, Oregon who have a similar boat and have been doing this for 11 years. They have cruised most of France and were a fount of information. We decided that this was as far as we were willing to go on the Bourgogne so we decided to go back the way we came. As you can guess, getting out of the weeds was a horror story. The props wouldn’t respond and the bow thruster was jammed. After almost running ashore again, Phil managed to get us free and we were off. I’m sure it’s beautiful but we weren’t prepared to get into serious trouble by trying to go further.

See – I told you the water level is down (St Florentin)

So we headed back to Brienon, stayed a few days and now we are back in Joigny. Joigny not only is a pretty town but it has a McDonald’s for free wifi and a big supermarket across the street.  Our next stop is Auxerre where we will wait to hear from Simon that the battery charger has arrived. After that we might go part way down the Nivernais but we won’t get far as we’ll really only have three more weeks of cruising before we head to Paris for a week and them home. Wow, where has the time gone?

Love to all –Captain Skinny (as in he’s lost 25 pounds from worry) and the Not-So-Skinny First Mate

Paris and Moret-sur-Loing

Dear Family and Friends

It has been an interesting week to say the least! We left Nogent-sur-Marne on the 31^st of May and joined the Seine River to make our way to Paris. The Seine is incredibly busy with peniches (barges) travelling at speeds much greater than we travel so we had to deal with the turbulence. It didn’t help that it was also quite windy so my mal de mer was acting up. Thank goodness we made it to the Arsenal marina when we did!

Calypso moored at the Arsenal

The Monument to the Bastille – built where it formerly stood

The Arsenal is in the 4^th arrondissement - very convenient to all the major sites and the métro was on our doorsteps. We were in berth #95 so that gives you an idea of how big it is – over 100 boats at any given time. The neatest thing though is that there are boaters from everywhere – UK, Germany, Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, The Channel Islands (Guernsey) and of course – drum roll please – Canada. As usual ours was the only Canadian flag to be seen! In the ‘it’s a small world ‘ sense, we met a couple from Guernsey who are friends of the brother of our Windy Poplars neighbours the Meinke’s. Awesome!

My Aunt Jean and Uncle Owen (my Mom’s brother) from near Toronto arrived on June 1^st to cruise with us for a week. We stayed in Paris for a few days to give them a chance to recover from jet lag and sightsee. That’s when the trouble started. What we didn’t realize is that it was a week that included a national holiday (Ascension Thursday) and midterm break for both British and then European students. Everywhere we went there were unbelievable lineups so we have many, many pictures of the outside of tourist attractions but the only one we really went into was Sacré Coeur in Montmartre. We walked our little butts off the first day as I had forgotten how far it was from the Eiffel Tower to Musee d’Orsay. We walked 12 MILES that day – talk about pooped. Notre Dame was very close to the mooring so that was an easy visit, we took both the Batobus (water taxi) and the métro to others.

Montmartre’s Sacré Coeur– insanely busy (Phil and Owen are there somewhere)

Artists of Montmartre – Place du Tertre

As we were waiting to take the funicular up to Sacré Coeur sadly my purse was picked and I lost over 200 euros. The good news was that our passports were not taken.  Luckily it was only the food money that was stolen. The beer money was safely tucked in Phil’s wallet! Then later that day my uncle’s pocket was picked but he only lost 100 euros. Our Paris experience was somewhat dampened by both the money loss and our inability to avoid millions of other tourists. The most mind blowing experience though was to go out on a Saturday morning to get groceries and not a store was open! We couldn’t believe it! Can you imagine going shopping in Canada on a Saturday morning and finding nothing open – not on your life! Luckily we had enough canned goods to fall back on until we could get to a store the next day – although finding stores open on a Sunday is challenging in itself.

Famous landmark – Chinagora Hotel at the confluence of the Seine and the Marne

Our first day out from Paris was interesting. As you can imagine the Seine shores are lined with industrial sites – not very pretty. But after about 4 hours we were once again seeing green banks and some lovely villages. Cruising past the Forests of Fontainebleau was gorgeous.

Beautiful houses all along the Forest of Fontainebleau

The trouble came when we wanted to moor for the night. Several supposed moorages didn’t exist as promised (sound familiar?)  so we went much further than we really wanted to. But all that fell by the wayside when we arrived in Moret-sur-Loing. What a stunning little village! Remnants of a medieval fort – parts of the wall and the portal gates remain. The church is 12^th century and lots of houses are either ancient stone or tudor style half timbered black/brown and white. The painter Sisley lived here and he used Moret as a subject for many of his paintings. I think we can say that this is the most spectacular village we have ever visited!

St Mammès - Jousting on the water – someone is going to get wet

Moret-sur-Loing - Beautiful building housing the shop of the famous candy

Gorgeous little alleyways

Sisely painted here

Good thing we are enjoying it so much as we are here for several days longer than planned. Guess who’s on strike? Yup, the lock keepers on the Seine! In order to get to the Yonne River and Auxerre, we need to pass through just one more lock on the Seine. If it lasts much longer we may have to change our plans – AGAIN – and head down the canals of the centre – a series of 3 different canals that run one into the other. But we’ll wait until Wednesday evening before we make that decision.

As always we’ve been meeting boaters from many countries - that really is the best part of this whole experience. A nice Australian family arrived today just as a lovely couple from Plymouth left. Steve spent most of one afternoon helping Phil find the fault with our battery charger only to discover that it was fried. Oh well – we’ll have to get a new one when we get to a centre large enough to have a chandlery and a good boat mechanic. We still don’t know why the battery powered lights in the salon don’t work but we usually try to get a moorage with electricity so it’s not a disaster. Phil gets a little stressed by all the things that go wrong but realistically boats are just a another problem waiting to happen. It’s part of the charm of cruising!!

Thanking Steve (with wife Anne) for all his help with Champagne and strawberries (Clockwise from the left– Jean, Phil, Anne, Owen and Steve)

But, hey, we are in France! Baguettes are my new best friend, my aunt and uncle are wonderful company and seem to be enjoying themselves regardless and the weather has been superb. We finally got our first day of rain and we’ve been here for over a month. Phil’s birthday is today so we’ll go the patisserie and buy a gateau. Moret is also the home of a very special candy – Sucre d’Orge – a 300 year old recipe developed by nuns of the Prieure de Notre-Dame des Anges order. Good stuff!

Dining al fresco in Melun

We are looking forward to getting to Auxerre as we’ve heard so much about it and then heading down the Canal du Nivernais. More stories to follow!! Stay tuned.

Love to all – The Captain and the ex-Tourist Guide (I managed to resign just before being fired!)

France 2011 - Weeks 3 & 4

Dear Family and Friends

OK, so here’s the scoop. Have you heard of a book called ‘40,000,000 Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong’? Well, I ’m here to tell you “Oh yes, they can!!!” And if you have the time, I’ll tell you why.

Firstly they don’t know how to spell.
As an example, I was in the épicerie looking for rice. I asked the clerk in my very best French – “Ou est le riz?” – which I assumed was pronounced reezz. She looked at me very strangely so I used the universal language of pantomime.  In my best Charade mode I measured out a cup of reezz, added 2 cups of water, put the pot on the stove, put the reezz in the bowl and cleverly whipped out my chopsticks and began eating from my reezz bowl.  Understanding dawned as she exclaimed “Ah, ree!” Ree???  Seriously, why do the French put letters  - like a perfectly good zed - at the end of a word if they don’t want you to use them?????

This .............                                                                                         

                                                                                 becomes this!

Secondly, what do they have against working for a full day – morning to evening?
Why do they take 2 hours off in the middle of the day just when I’m ready to go shopping. Zut alors! Very frustrating. And God forbid that they should actually show up for work on Mondays. That would be grounds for another strike for sure. So if we actually want to cook on the boat Sunday and Monday, we have to fill the fridge on Saturday but only between the hours of 9 to 12 and 2 to 6.

Spring has sprung – the cygnets are here!

Thirdly – and the most frustrating – why do they advertise services that they don’t actually provide?
Prime example. On Monday, 23^rd of May we set off from our very lovely mooring in La Ferté sous Jouarre. Great village, fabulous market on the Sunday morning, good shops. We enjoyed it so much we stayed for 2 days. The day was beautiful – sunny, bright blue sky and warm. After a very short cruise – about 12kms – we arrived at Saint Jean les Deux Jumeaux. Gorgeous little village with a brand new dock which advertised water and electricity. Oops, no electricity and no water. No problem we’ll go another 25kms to Meaux – that’s a very large town with full services. Which may have been true if you were arriving on the 26^th of May and not the 23^rd. The  marina was actually closed so obviously no electricity! We saw a notice on the board that the town council were trying to decide how to charge boaters for electricity. It obviously made perfect sense to them not to continue providing any at all until they sorted out the problem (Maybe a nightly moorage charge like other marinas? Far too complicated for these guys!). We decided to moor for one night anyway and risk a ticket. Let’s see them try to collect that fee!

Oh well! It’s our anniversary let’s go out to supper. Rats! It’s Monday. The only thing open was an Italian restaurant (presumably because Italians aren’t French) which wasn’t Edmonton’s Royal Pizza by any means but what the heck. We were in France – how bad can it be?

Our fall back meal – they make lovely omelettes!

The other bugbear that’s obviously not their fault but can be slightly annoying is to pull up to a beautiful little village expecting to walk into the main street to have lunch and finding that the village has absolutely no stores or shops other than a boulangerie – a baguette might be heavenly but when you are hungry and there’s no filling, it lacks a certain je ne sais croix! I guess the French economy isn’t doing well as there are just hundreds of closed small, owner-run businesses. The French economy is probably running on the union-led state employees.

Sadly, you can fire a canon ball down the main street of this little village.

Now that I’ve taken the mickey out of Frenchmen and have risked offending Francophiles everywhere, I must also admit that we’ve met wonderful people who have been very helpful. The Capitaine and his lovely assistant here in Nogent couldn’t be more accommodating and are quite tolerant of our efforts to communicate in French. We do quite well most of the time but there are still occasions requiring vocabulary that we don’t yet have.

And before you get the idea that it’s all bad, be assured we are still having a wonderful time. Cruising down the Marne was just beautiful!! Lovely wide open river, very very little traffic, and gorgeous scenery. We must be ahead of the summer boaters as we hardly meet anyone on the water. We have gone days without meeting another boat. When we were in La Ferté sous Juarre, there were 4 boats! I was ready to organize a cruising convention! One Australian, one Dutchman (very grumpy), one German and the Canadians – us!!

La Ferté used to be the world’s largest supplier of millstones

Tiny villages all along the Marne and miles of vineyards on the hillsides

We also moored up in Epernay for three days. Both Epernay and Reims (pronounced Rance – like dance – see what I mean??) are in the heart of the Champagne country. All along the river were miles and miles of vineyards. Quite spectacular, although the lack of rain must be worrying for the growers. We took a tour of a champagne house – La Castellane – and found it fascinating. There are 6 kms of underground caves, special lighting so as not to affect the wine. Workers drive through the tunnels on little forklifts to get from one end to the other as they transport either filled bottles ready for storage or supplies to make and bottle the wine. We had a tasting at the end of the tour and we purchased a bottle which was supposed to have been for our anniversary but we’ll wait for another time to open it! The brut was too dry, the demi-sec was too sweet so like Goldilocks we bought a rosé.

La Castellane Champagne House – I climbed up the tower. Phil was too hung over!!!

The weather (until today the 26^th) has been just beautiful. We are currently mooring at Nogent-sur-Marne - just 12kms outside Paris. Because we kept finding marinas with no facilities (despite what was advertised) we cruised for fewer days than planned. We wanted to go to Paris but when we phoned for reservations, the port at Arsenal – which is at the foot of the Bastille – was full. Thankfully we had made reservations for the planned date of arrival, the 31^st of May, so we’ll be there for 4 days while we pick up my aunt and uncle who are coming for a visit. We can hardly wait – our first visitors!

Nogent calls itself ‘Paris l’Est’ with firm grounds for so doing. The buildings and architecture remind me so much of Paris. It is truly beautiful and for once the marina is full service – even has laundry machines as well as WIFI – which of course they pronounce weefee. I have taken a ton of pictures of houses and apartments. Truly lovely. We are a good hike straight up a hill into the town centre so there’s a health benefit as well!

Beautiful Nogent-sur-Marne

We have been on the water for almost a month and with only a few hiccups have enjoyed it immensely. Phil has really improved his driving and parking skills and I have yet to fall into the water. My rope skills are much improved and in a brief moment of euphoria I actually considered learning how to dock the boat. Thankfully it was a brief moment. Let’s not jinx anything now. We’ve spent time really organizing the boat and getting rid of stuff we’ll never use. Our favourite pastime is to put something out beside the garbage can and watch to see who comes along to take their new found treasure home. We can hardly wait to continue the journey!

Much love to all – The Captain and Mrs. Roper