Happy Anniversary Kupava

Where Next?
Bob Williams
Sat 13 Nov 2010 12:16

Last night I was invited to join my Ukrainian friends once again, this time to celebrate the first anniversary of their voyage. And once again it was a very pleasant evening, fish for main course of course. I enjoyed an interesting conversation with Audrey, but it seemed the skipper, Iurii, adopted a wise man’s strategy of listening much and saying little. My conversation with Audrey was frequently interrupted as Audrey stopped to translate the gist of it to Iurii. This I very much respected as I have so often been left on the fringe of a conversation in Spanish or French without a clue as to what was being discussed. At such times I have found it interesting to observe the facial expressions and other non verbal signs people use in conversation, but even so after a while it can feel a little isolating. I asked Iurii, through Audrey, for his thoughts, noting that while Audrey explained our conversation to him, nothing ever seemed to come back. He replied that he likes to listen and to understand. As I said, a wise man. At the end of the evening Audrey presented me with a fat copy of “Bowditch” as a gift with an inscription from the “crazy Ukrainians”.

This morning I had to do a bit of a reorganisation to find a home for this well respected and hefty tome. on navigation.  I do not wish to be appear ungrateful but wonder whether the particular volume may have been a bit of ballast in excess of Kupava’s essential requirements. Then I managed to fix my trusty Garmin GPS unit which all of a sudden stopped working a couple of days ago. I won’t bore you with the details, relatively simple as they are, but I am pleased to have this handy little unit operational again, even though it is no longer gas tight and nitrogen filled, but rather one that is full of air, certainly not gas tight and held together with masking tape. But it works!

Then I spent much of the remainder of the day talking to a friend on Skype, a lovely lady by the name of Martina, who, I think I can now safely announce, will be joining the crew of Sylph early next month. But more on Martina in due course.

All is well.

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