Lots of things to be done - Thinking about the future
Sans Peur
Grete & Fred Vithen
Tue 13 May 2014 11:56
Hindeloopen 13 May
We are at the moment running around like confused idiots to try to fix everything.
Maintanance, repairs, inspections, additional equipment to be bought and installed, legal paperwork, insurance ......
We are waiting for the registration of Sans Peur, will be in Hindeloopen NL, and that will at least take a month from now. Insuranse is allmost ok, the sails are said to be ready this week (inspeced, repared and cleaned) and soon (in a few weeks) we will have a bimini as well. Later this month we will have a pro to clean and conserve the teak deck (needs to be well taken care of, initial cost of the teak deck was 40.000 Euro!?, crazy money.)
The mast will be stored and inspected here at Jachthaven Hindeloopen. Later, next year Sept/Oct, transported to Romania, entrence to Black Sea.
Most probably we will have a generator installed as well and that will also take time. The guys from the right company (means the company which made all the electrics on the boat originally) will come this week. So at around the end of this month we will move and moore in Makkum (another picturesque Frisian village at the IJsselmeer, freshwater artificial lake).
Little by little things are getting ready but we will not leave from here, Hindeloopen/ Makkum, until the middle of June, earliest ....
Good warmer weather are slowly developing, it has been windy rainy cold weather for to long know. This means also that all boat people are buzy preparing for the coming "sailing" season and Hindeloopen is one of the biggest marinas i NL
Even if everything takes toooo long to get done we really like Friesland and the people here.
Easygoing and English speaking. There are canals and boats everywhere and plenty of nice villages to explore. We have a rental car for the rest of the month and also bought two foldable nice Dutch Batavus push bikes.
Soon, maintanance of the Perkins Sabre needs to be done first, we will start our test cruising. We need a lot of practice to handle this 22 ton ice breaker of a aluminium boat. Our first major cruise will be to Berlin. When? No idea at the moment. Next we will go south into France, Paris. In the autum we will be further south spending winter close to The Med. 2015, spring, we will repeat the route we once made from Port St Louis du Rhone, France to Black Sea (via Rhone, Saone, Rhein, Mains and Danube), through the rivers and canals into the Black Sea, passing Istanbul and then into the Aegian Sea with its beautiful Turkish and Greek islands.