Category: Europe (Other than UK)
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A Meal with Charlotte’s Friends
Thembi’s Charlotte had lived in Reykjavik for a while as an Artist in Residence. We had a tasty meal out with her friend, a silversmith, and her boyfriend. Gosh the food was tasty, can’t for the life of me remember what I was eating.
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Sailing Plans. It’s ABC and its ABCBA
I think that is an army expression and apparently it means: It’s All Been Changed and it’s All Been Changed Back Again. Well for Sumara at least. On Sunday I checked the Grib files and the Icelandic Met Office were forecasting 20m/s (Gale force 8) and I felt the conditions would be too strong for…
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I’ve Learnt Something Not Many People Know
Earlier in the trip I tried to take a picture of all the crew looking miserable. Everyone looked very sad indeed, apart from Dan. You see Dan is always happy. His catch phrase, no matter what absolute chaos is happening around him, seems to be, “It’ll be fine”. Well, I have discovered probably the only…
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I think we may have a Plan?
Sarah has caught her flight back to England and Gudrun has now arrived in Iceland. Charlotte flies out on Sunday. Ray arrives on the evening of 3rd August. It’s quite complicated! The weather doesn’t look brilliant but there does seem to be a small window of opportunity on Sunday to get around the Reykjanes headland…
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Louise Bourgeois
Tim and I went to the Island National Gallery on Thursday. There was an exhibition by Louise Bourgeois and some of her pieces felt strangely familiar. There were disturbing nightmarish shapes. Many were ghastly un-namely things of no colour and some were puce. Frightening bulging shapes bursting out. Then I remembered Tim’s splendid duff that…
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It’s all change.
Stuart has now left for Ullapool. He really enjoyed the trip but commitments back in Scotland meant that he needed to fly back. We will miss him. Stuart’s industrial yellow Wellies were often the only way the Sumara crew knew where the Thembi crew were. They could be spotted from several miles trudging through the…
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Girlie Talk
I’ve got the solution to the girlie talk. Ear defenders and a copy of Earthmovers Monthly. Perfect. I think Charlotte has gone shopping for nail varnish remover again.
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Reykjavik
Now I’m sitting in a cosy café sheltering from the gale. We moored outside the new concert hall next to Thembi at 02:30 this morning before the wind got up. It was a grand sail but the wind eventually dropped off. There were continuous gale warnings on the VHF so we decided to start up…
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Race before the Gale
Position N64,41.41 x W023,51.10 Wind NW F4 Thembi and Sumara left Olafsvik at midnight in order to use a short weather window to get us to Reykjavik. Sumara is currently of Malarrif with full main and a poled out genoa making 5kts on the log but punching at least one knot of tide. It has…