Homeward Bound

At some point, I bowed to pressure from abroad (mostly James Heathfield's common sense urging) as everyone was wondering about our New Year's party.

I had booked a cheap flight from Nice as Armando and I had signed up to take a class near there in late November....when that fell through we decided to make as much East\South progress as possible, so we were in Sardinia when it came time for me to take the flight.

So, one 15 hour ferry, 3 trains, 1 French train strike, one hotel, 1 taxi and 2 planes later I arrived rested and refreshed in Tampa!

And I thought winter boat travel in the Med was tiring!

Diane's dog seemed to remember me, Diane was happy to have me home (I think she got over that quickly) there were some clothes I didn't recognize on my side of the closet, but they turned out to be women's clothing (Diane was claiming more space in my absence) and the house was wonderfully clean and tidy (which it wasn't when I left 3 weeks later....hmmmh).

You could take a shower without sliding a token into a slot and pressing a spring loaded faucet every 1 minute and you could control the water temperature and the whole thing didn't time out on you!

What a wonderful, wonderful place, very strangely unreal.

Anyway, 3 weeks and I left all the important stuff until the last day (of course).

Great New Years party (thanks Jimmy Sexton....I hope you come back and I promise we won't work you to death again!) as those of you in attendance know.

It was very strange to look at my empty boat lift and realize where Severance was, and had been, got a new perspective on this whole thing.

The weeks went quickly and it was soon time to get back to my reality....the trip is about ½ done at this point and there are a lot of miles yet to put on the keel.