April 2015 England - London, Sulfolk, Ipswich, Cambridge
England | Limehouse | new B&G instruments
April 2, 2015
Dear Family and Friends,
We wish you a blessed Holy Week and a Happy Easter! I can't believe I haven't written a log in a month! Well since last I wrote we had a fantastic visit to Gothenburg, Sweden. Lars and Carin went above and beyond making sure we had a wonderful visit. We enjoyed wonderful meals, conversations, local walks and exploration of downtown Gothenburg. We walked to the local marinas to see where s/y Ymer is moored in the summer and on the hard in the winter. New puppy Boris loves it all. He is never far from Lars' side! It was great fun meeting their two sons and families. We had a delicious lunch at one of their son Anders' restaurants. Saw Marcus another cruiser from our Kemer Turkey days there. Another day we went to the stable to watch grand daughter Liv take a riding lesson and then check out the progress on son Johann's new home. Friday we drove to Halberg Rossy factory where Lars bought some hatch hinges he needed. Then we visited the kids summer cottage before driving to Grundsund, Sweden to have a lovely lunch at Ulla and Roger's house. It is so much fun catching up with cruisers we've met through the years. When back in London, another cruising couple, Mike and Jo s/y Harriette came down by train for a visit on St. Patrick's Day. We enjoyed a nice visit and checking out the pubs along the Thames.
We've enjoyed many lunchtime concerts at St. Martins-in-the-Field and St. Olaves Church. We also went to the Guildhall Symphony Orchestra Spring Concert at the Barbican. We discovered this group our first year in London and have made it a point to hear their Fall and Spring Concerts. We've enjoyed some visits to the National Gallery and especially enjoyed the special exhibition "Inventing Impressionism". Renoir, Monet, Pissaro, Manet, Degas, and Sisley have become some of our favorite artists! We've been able to walk a couple of hours each day too. The weather has been good although quite windy this week. The spring flowers are gorgeous.
It hasn't been all play. We do have boat projects. We have most of the wires run and our new NavPod and instruments mounted in the cockpit and our second Zeus display in the nav station down below. We have an electrician coming on Tuesday who will hopefully mount the new wind instruments and windex on the main mast. Then run the new wiring for them down the mast. It'll be great having our new instruments working before we leave London. We'll put in the new depth sounder while out of the water in Suffolk. Yesterday Al mounted the genset instruments we got while home. Today we started some sewing projects.
We're having dinner with friends still at SKD on Saturday as we'll all be heading out of London for the season soon. It'll be time to put the sails back on next week and prepare for our departure April 13 or 14 depending on the weather. The tide times are good for departure down the Thames to the Medway River and then up to the River Orwell the next day. We haul out for boat maintenance April 21 for a week. Then we'll be ready to start Cruising 2015 around the UK and Ireland. (our 10th season living aboard Artemis). Hope all is well. We so enjoy hearing from each of you. Love and God Bless, Sally and Al
