Other than a six week (ten for Laurie) break around Thanksgiving and Christmas in the USA, during which I managed a trip down to Dallas to visit Abigail and Greg for a few days, we’ve been hard at work on numerous projects around the boat. The project list started with nearly 70 items – which has now been whittled down dramatically.

Among the more mundane annual servicing projects, we’ve made repairs to both the boats heater and the watermaker, but more exciting, we have; new curtains, new indirect and dimmable LED lighting in the salon, new task lighting in the galley, new galley faucet, rebuild of the

Indirect lights below new curtains!

hydraulic backstay, new high water bilge level alarm and an overhaul of the rudder actuation arm.

Still to come: new extractor fan above the galley stove, perhaps new cushions in the salon as well as completion of the more mundane stuff in preparation for the coming season.

And where are we headed this year? We’ll probably get going in early April and head towards the south coast of the UK, then head towards Brittany or perhaps go direct across Biscay to the Spanish Rias where we’re hoping to spend a significant part of the early summer. Afterwards, we’ll continue south and then turn into the Mediterranean. Not sure how far we’ll get, but possibly as far as Venice for Christmas? Who knows!