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| Seth Douglas Higgins (3 months old) |
There's many things happened since we last posted anything, several months ago! We always intended to revisit the time and just didn't get round to it. Our passage, a series of day sails, northwards along the Turkiye coast went well. We berthed at Canakkale so that we could visit the memorials at Gallipoli and then headed west towards Greece, visiting islands as well as the most northerly peninsula Aghion Oros, mainland Greece, to view the many monasteries along the coastline. Visiting the Sporades was quite special because we had a week in Skopolos, which coincided with 9/11 back in 2001(our first & only week's holiday on terra-firma Greece)! After enjoying the peaceful and wonderful ambiance anchored off Limnos, Alonisis, Skopolos & other smaller islands we chose to anchor-off Skiathos and ended up getting hit by lightening during a storm. This took-out virtually all our electronics and much of our electrical gear so after making sure we were reasonably safe to make further passages, gradually made our way back towards our base in Kemer, via Marmaris (to get some initial repairs carried out). The lightening repairs have taken several months and some considerable inconvenience. Nevertheless, we were able to resume sailing last September when there was little remaining evidence of damage for visiting guests to see.
In the meantime, Sue & I became GP's for the 2nd time on 1st September when Seth Douglas Higgins arrived, courtesy of Jennifer & Paul. Christmas 2010 has therefore been quite special for Sue & I, being fortunate GP's twice over in just one year and we hope we can learn to be a good Granny & naughty Granpa as quickly as possible!
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| Sophie May Douglas (9 months old) |
When we're next on the yacht there's some additional gear getting installed, amongst other things, a sparkling new Icom SSB radio (to gain us long-distance radio communications) solar panel, which I've chosen to fit neatly on the coachroof (so that we can keep the main batteries charged when we're away from the yacht without needing to rely on shore power) and a speed-drive (frequency inverter) to enable us to make full use of the water maker when we're running our engine; without needing to run the generator. All good stuff too!
Happy New Year and safe sailing 2011.
