“There’s no place like home,” Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz and this is true even if your home is a sailboat moored against a dock in Spain and you have minimal living space. It’s especially true for us right now as we’ve been away for more than a month, living mostly out of a suitcase, doing a lot of traveling and working hard to take care of our various responsibilities on land including the bittersweet task of clearing out Patrice’s family home. Not to worry, most of what we had to do was manageable and we had ample opportunity to enjoy ourselves in the midst of it all, including one lovely day walking around in Paris which is still, after all these years, our favorite city in the world.
This had to be one of the most perfect days of the year in Paris. The temperature was balmy, the sun shone and we strolled along the Seine hand in hand along with our fellow Parisians who all had inhabitual smiles on their faces .
Patrice and I both agree that the best part about being off the boat is the opportunity to spend time with friends and family. I love my husband and I truly am enjoying being together more than we have ever been in our almost 30 years as a couple. Thus said, the one thing I really miss in this cruising life aside from my darling daughters, is spending time with my girlfriends. This past month on land, I was fortunate to be able to spend a bit of time with some of you, sadly not all and it has been a balm to my soul. Thank you, dear ones, for your continued friendship despite my frequent absences from your lives. The photo here is courtesy of a fellow cruiser and no, I'm not onboard, but I wish I was there with my pals. I just love the exuberant female camaraderie, not to mention the pink boat!
If Patrice were to have a voice in this blog, he would probably say that the thing he misses the most, aside from our girls, is being able to talk as much as he likes. As most of you know, my husband really likes to talk and the number of words he needs to express in a day is far superior to the number of words I am capable of listening to :-/ Thankfully we’re rarely far from a port for very long and as Patrice is not shy in any way and is capable of talking to anyone about anything AND is not daunted in the slightest by any foreign tongue, he almost always manages to find someone to talk to.
Nevertheless, it really is good to be back onboard Taka Trois. We were grateful to find things in fairly good shape onboard when we arrived late Sunday, except for some nasty scrapes and gouges on the port side of the hull. We think it was caused by another boat rubbing repeatedly up against her. The marina blamed it on the backlash from tropical storm Nathalie, but amazingly they have taken full responsibility without an argument (!) and fixed it in two days, just in time for our planned departure tomorrow! Viva l'Espagna!
So no, we won't be lingering here in Spain. There is an autumn chill in the air here and the weatherman has forecast good wind and clear skies for the next few days, so we will be on our way south to Porto, Portugal, the first stop of phase II of our journey and apparently an excellent place to replenish some of our ‘ballast’ (or wine cellar) which strangely ‘evaporated‘ during the first part of our trip.
Consequently there's no rest for these weary travelers as we are spending our last hours in Spain unpacking and reorganizing, checking our instruments, restocking our supplies, cleaning, passage planning and getting ready to go. I’ll be in touch when we reach Portugal, but meanwhile, I invite you to have a look at some of the updates on this website which include additional photos of Taka Trois on ‘the boat’ page, a new page called ‘albums’ which has more photos of some of the places we’ve been to with her and some details on where we’re going next in ‘the plan.’ Véale pronto mis amigos ...
Consequently there's no rest for these weary travelers as we are spending our last hours in Spain unpacking and reorganizing, checking our instruments, restocking our supplies, cleaning, passage planning and getting ready to go. I’ll be in touch when we reach Portugal, but meanwhile, I invite you to have a look at some of the updates on this website which include additional photos of Taka Trois on ‘the boat’ page, a new page called ‘albums’ which has more photos of some of the places we’ve been to with her and some details on where we’re going next in ‘the plan.’ Véale pronto mis amigos ...
The way out of our port in Baiona which we hope to be traveling through very soon.
RSS Feed