Many of you reading this blog entry have received our 2022 holiday letter and this post is exactly the same, but for others, whose email addresses we have misplaced, this is our year in review in a few paragraphs.
In early 2022, work on the Gabriola cabin continued and we finished the tiling around the fireplace, in the kitchen and bathroom plus installed a beautiful fir floor on the main level and staircase – flooring in the loft is this year’s project (and perhaps some proper curtains). The floor planks were milled by Geoff using his Woodmizer© sawmill from trees that were cut on our property.
Geoff continued his training with the Gabriola Volunteer Fire Department and attained the position of lieutenant and Linda lived part time in the condo in Vancouver and continued eradicating invasive weeds in Stanley Park. After the sailing trip was over (see below) Linda moved full time to Gabriola, with only occasional trips to Vancouver. We have a lot of invasive weeds here as well, so she has a lot to do.
The two highlights were: returning to Curare for a season of sailing and bringing her back to the west coast. I am writing this on December 28, 2022 and Curare is still not home with us, she has been stuck in Bellingham Washington since December 20 due to crazy weather, among other things. We hope to finally bring her to Gabriola in early January 2023 where we have a winter berth at a dock.
We flew to Paris at the end of June on our way back to Curare who was waiting for us in Sant Carles de la Rapita, northern Spain. It was a wonderful four day visit in the city of romance with perfect weather for walking around outside and visiting two of it’s famous museums; the Louvre and the Rodin. A train ride to Barcelona, a bus trip to Sant Carles and we finally saw our boat on July 1, Canada Day, after eight months away.
As Canadians we only get 90 days in the Schengen region so this year we decided to extend our summer season by sailing to Tunisia for 30 days. Prior to Tunisia we visited Mallorca and the island of Sardinia, where Linda visited her cousin, and two of our close friends came to visit. This summer the temperatures were almost too warm, an average of 35 C, but frequent leaps into the Mediterranean kept us cooled down. Tunisia was a stark contrast from Europe with it’s different culture, walled medinas, architecture, food, and more Roman ruins than we thought existed, but it was a country worth visiting, probably the highlight of the 2022 highlights.
Leaving Tunisia we sailed east to the tiny island nation of Malta, arriving on September 21 -Independence Day. While wandering through the cobblestone streets of this ancient fortress we decided it was time to bring Curare home, to the west coast of Canada. As everyone reading this can probably imagine there was a lot of discussion and we finally concluded that we did not want to make the Atlantic crossing to the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal and north up the west coast. Instead, we decided to ship her by freighter to Florida and then truck her overland to Bellingham, USA. This sounds simple but it was the beginning of a nightmare of challenges, some of them so unbelievable we have a difficult time wrapping our head around the events. We are planning to document the shipping journey in this blog but as we are still in the process of bringing Curare home we haven’t had much free time for writing. Hoping to get back at it in January.
Wishing everyone a calm and peaceful 2023, and now that we are home for a while please come for a visit.
Linda and Geoff
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