1st November 2013
Davy’s Wine Bar – Greenwich
Maxine and Dirk had kindly agreed to meet us for a chat over dinner. By amazing coincidence we found out about Maxine’s amazing exploits early this year when we saw a car with Russian number plates parked in Greenwich. Asking if Dirk was Russian he replied that he wasn’t but his girlfriend was (well Dutch but Russian speaking) and it transpired that she was planning to join a yacht “Tanui” to sail through the same canal that we were planning to sail through. In fact she was going much further than we were planning and actually stayed on the yacht for four months travelling from Tromso all the way to the Black Sea making if the first ever foreign flagged yacht to accomplish the task. Maxine and the Skipper will be writing a book for Imray in the near future. I could not do justice to all the tales we heard in this little blog but we have convinced her that a talk at Greenwich Yacht Club would be well received and we are hoping Norman can organise it. From our chat we did learn some important tips. Firstly the Russian speaker is totally vital and it would be unlikely (if allowed) for one shared speaker to be enough. On a more upbeat note, there was a mere hint of a faint possibility that just maybe Maxine could be persuaded to do a little bit more Russian Canal Sailing in 2015?! As far as the 3,000 euro fee to transit the canal, Maxine did not think it was nearly that much so that would be very helpful for our budgets. It seems that some training in Vodka drinking is going to be needed.
I’m looking forward to hearing Maxine’s talk.
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