March 2015 - England
England | London | Limehouse Marina
March 8, 2015
Dear Family and Friends,
Those of you who follow facebook will be up to date on our present activities. We've been back aboard Artemis at Limehouse for over a week now. The first 4 or 5 days are the hardest as we adjust to jetlag:-) Since we haven't written since Christmas I'll give a quick update on our USA travels. We had atleast 2-3 weeks with each of our sons families enjoying our grand children. We try to break up our visits so we visit each one twice while we're home. Spent time with Al's mom (90)in MN bringing her to Patrick's so she could enjoy the kids too. Then we spent a week in Florida with my Dad (92)at my sister Brigid's house. Al and I both hope we're doing as well as they are at that age. We got word from Paris marina Port de Plaisance l'Arsenal right downtown Paris that we've been accepted for winter berthing this next year. We need to arrive in Paris before Oct. 1 as the locks will have maintenance done on them over the winter. So that will cut our summer cruising a little shorter than usual but Paris in October...who's complaining:-) We do need to make arrangements to have our masts removed and stored for the winter at Rouen as we can't go any further up the Seine with them up. We were on a waiting list for two years so we are excited to be in. Now that 6 years of French I had over 45 years ago may need some work!
We had a great week of concerts at St. Martins-in-the-Field this past week. It was the annual Chamber Music Competition so the quality was excellent. We also went to a Cruising Association Talk here at Limehouse about Cruising Around the Islands. We plan to go to Suffolk Yacht harbor mid April to haul out for Spring maintenance. We purchased new wind, speed, depth and two multi-function displays (one for the nav station and one for in the cockpit) Our instruments were 29 years old and we decided it was time to come into new technology while we were still using it regularly. We've also been told we are truly out of it as we have neither iphone nor ipad but that'll have to wait another year. We plan to head to southern UK in May and around Land's End, up the Irish Sea visiting Wales, Ireland and western Scotland up to Skye area before heading south again. We'll take Artemis to the Channel Islands in August to get out of the EU (renewing our 18 month VAT free status)We're hoping to leav e Artemis in Cherburg, France to fly home for 3 weeks then return to take her up the Seine River to Rouen before Paris.
We're looking forward to our trip to Gothenburg, Sweden this week. We're visiting friends Carin and Lars who we met and cruised with in Turkey 2007 and 2008. We also cruised with them this past summer in Norway. Hope all is well and you're enjoying a nice weekend. Love and God Bless Sally and Al
