England, we have visited you for half a month. The first glance of you included the cliffs around Dover, brightly shining in the morning light, plums the Dover Coast Guard who checked whether we could spell the name of our boat. Sure, we could. The following days brought us into lovely marinas. We enjoyed not only your fish and chips, but also the best burgers ever, with lots of onions chopped into the meat. Markus has particularly appreciated that Punk IPA beer from the U.S. (sorry) was available in every super market, different to other places visited so far, including our home country. We take away a large bottle of Plymouth Gin and many bold and bloody histories which the old stones have offered to us. We admire the relaxed talking of Brits, too.
The highlight however was meeting again with Simon and Kate. Yes, another Kate. Her great^n-granny must have been in the EU as well on said Vicking’s day (to whomever seeking a beautiful woman in England, we recommend looking for Kates first). Kate and Simon are friends we met first time in Korfu, Greece, back in 2014. Re-united in 2017, all of us have enjoyed a lovely evening in their marina club house. Same evening, Simon arranged for a yacht repair service who showed up next morning to do some work on our boat. And we got lots of hints from them, which finally brought us to nicest places such as Cornish Fowey or the magic place called www.edenproject.com. Many thanks to you again, Simon and Kate!
On our last day, we even made new friends from Vancouver Island, Canada, and we’ve had some beers together and a lot of fun. Kevin owns a Hallberg-Rassy too, and we will set sails together to cross Bay of Biscay, starting on Saturday early morning. What a great last day in the UK!
Was there anything which was not going as expected in the UK? Yepp, two things occurred which couldn’t be stopped by MI6, at least not in time: Firstly, we experienced two winter storms. We also do have winter storms in Switzerland, but here they seem to happen in summer, too. We even had to turn our heater on. Secondly, an awful misunderstanding happened on the way back from Pendennis Castle: imagine a family with hungry kids at a rainy bus stop with no bus for the rest of the day. Within seconds, a taxi was called over the phone. The friendly person who answered the telephone with “It’s me-e!” asked for the detail and informed that a taxi would be there within four to five minutes. That was at least what Markus understood. Thirty minutes wetter and when calling the cab company again, they say that this was forty-five minutes for the taxi to arrive. And so it was. Yes, sometimes one hears what he would like to hear.
Now that we are about to leave UK, we can state that we have reached the first big target of our voyage. It was ‘to be in Falmouth by the end of July’. We set this target in order to have enough time to wait for a friendly weather window, required to sail into our three-day long journey across Bay of Biscay.
We logged 528 nautical miles to get here, something less than conservatively planned. A big part of our traveling time so far was along beautifully-rough British coast lines. We are leaving to come back again later. Bye-bye and see you again, Cornwall, England, UK!
Atlantic accomplished. Twice. 