Where Are My Ruby Slippers?

We are back home after our travels to Spain. We had a wonderful trip sailing and tasting tapas and local wines along the northern coast of Spain as far as the city of Gijon. For the most part the weather was very nice although we had cloudy weather once we got to the area around Gijon.

We took our time and did not get nearly as far as we thought we would get, Portgual. We had to be back at Les Raymonds for repair of a wall on our barn so after a month away, we headed back from the Spanish town of Hondaribia to Port Medoc, a sail that was about 33 hours. Wind and waves were not good and we slogged our way north to be able to be home by June 16th. Calypso, shown here in her perennial state of drooling, really suffered on the way back.

When we got home, we found our telephone pole had been struck by lightning and we had no phone or internet. It took France Telecom 11 days and 3 trips to repair it. We had service for 2 days when the pumper truck delivering cement for our barn repair cut the line so once again no service for 4 more days. All but our TV antenna is operational now, so I will be able to post highlights from our trip until we leave for the US next week.

Alone, Alone, All Alone

We have had not internet access during our trip to be able to answer email or post anything on the blog. We are currently in Gijon, Spain and have paid 10 euros to get connected for 24 hours. The trip has been wonderful. The weather excellent for the first leg and cloudy when we hit the mountainous areas as expected. We decided to stay at a marina in Gijon and rent to car for 3 days to go inland. We went to Leon, Santiago de Compostella, and Picos de Europa. We have learned how to take moorings, tie up to a wall for the night and put out enough but not too much line to accommodate 10 foot tides. Until Thursday, we have been the only boat in any port we have pulled into. Tomorrow we head back to Port Medoc as we need to be home by June 19th. Some images of our trip go uploaded today at our flickr site.

Getting Their Sea Legs

Dante and Calypso arrived on Petillant on Thursday. Calypso drooled all they way to the boat but thanks to some drugs from the Vet the drooling was not quite so bad. They knew exactly where they were and where their favorite hidy holes were to be found. They have had 3 days now to get their sea legs. Hopefully older and wiser they will not want to be outside the enclosure, nor will they want to jump off the boat and go visiting when we are at port. We leave at high tide tomorrow heading south for St. Jean de Luz which should be about a 24 hour trip.

Provisioning Petillant

One of the things I learned travelling down the ICW, Florida, and the Bahamas on Petillant involved our meals. I did not want to do any cooking that used lots of pots and pans, numerous ingredients, or took a lot of time. I also wanted to try the local foods and restaurants along the way and provision with what was available. Now thinking of what to stock to head south more thoughts come to mind. I do not want to haul a lot of food from shore on the dingy and I want to be prepared to deal with any fish we catch. Also as we will be in European waters, I should not depend on buying ice and we do not have a freezer. So in planning the provisioning, I have tried to stow what will be useful (and heavy) staples such as canned chick peas and pasta and leave a lot to what we will find in the markets along the way. At this point we have everything on board that I think is sufficient and we will see how it goes. Natalie had the guys label all the food brought on board before they took off from Stuart. It works really well.

Port Medoc en Fete

We arrived at Port Medoc just before May Day which is a national holiday here in France. Our marina was preparing to host a "Quai des Vins" festival. Three days of music, food and wine, sail boat races, fishing tournaments, and rides and games for children. The weather was splendid.

This is our first posting here after a long hiatus. Petillant is getting ready to cruise south to Spain. To see how we got to Port Medoc last week and why we are still sitting here as well as reading about our land-based life in France go to Ste-Foy-Bordeaux.blogspot.com.

Autumn Update

Just a quick note to let you, the gentle reader, know that Petillant finally cleared customs in mid-August, and is sitting happily in Port Medoc. We did not do any sailing this summer, preferring to get re-acquainted with the house, but we are looking forward to spring sailing next year. We have visited the boat since arrival in June, and it looks like it is in amazingly good shape, after completing the traverrsee. We have decided that this is such a nice marina, and a great spot to be based here, that we will take a long-term lease on the slip. More info in upcoming posts.

Summer in France

We have loaded a number of new photos to the FLickr site, and video will becoming soon, as well. We hope to organize the photos in a day or so, showing what part of the trip they describe.

Petillant is still in Port Medoc, where she arrived on June 28. Customs clearance is still in progress, with an agent based in La Rochelle - our latest word from him is that he thinks we will be able to clear the boat through, without paying the import/VAT. We have purchased our internal cruising passeport at the douane in Bordeaux, so we have the proper internal papers. However, without the customs clearance we are hesitant to go anywhere that we could be controlle by the douane, so Petillant will likely sit in Port Medoc for the rest of the summer.

Not that we don't have other things to do - we have made major progress in working on the house, with a terrasse underway, with the architecte now under contract to give us a rennovation plan, and with continuing work to clean up the grounds. We have been busy, and will continue to be busy thru the end of August, at least. We will be going off on a canal barge cruise at the end of August/early September, for a week, with friends from the US.

Since it does not look like we will be doing much sailing this summer, we are also considering setting up a blog of life here in France. There will be a link here when it gets set up, probably some time after the middle of August. Stay tuned...