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| A night on board in May... |
2023 has not been a good year for sailing on Kalessin. Even my plan to fit a new VHF with cockpit mic came to nothing when our electrician disappeared off the radar and declined to do anything. I did however manage to replace the anchor chain and achieve a few other minor improvements, and early on the morning of 24 May took Kalessin down to Landguard on my own, just to prove that I could. (Sam was at home in bed).
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| Sagrada Familia |
We did manage three days in Barcelona and a short big-ship cruise in the Med. Flying with Sam was ghastly but Barcelona was its lovely self and we stayed in a pleasant corner of Barceloneta.
In June, our plan A was to join the Westerly Owners' cruise to the Channel islands, but that failed to happen after two lots of crew dropped out, for extremely good reasons. We'd planned to join the N France leg of the cruise but then David Jibb, who was organising that leg, also dropped out and the leg was eventually abandoned. With no support at all I couldn't face doing the trip with just Sam and me.
So it was on to plan B - beg, borrow or pay for crew to take us across the North Sea to the IJmuiden and into the IJsselmeer. We approached Halcyon who found us a crew member, and it was looking good. But you may remember that early June saw weeks and weeks of north-easterlies, the worst possible wind for that crossing, especially with Sam on board. We had to be back in London for a family gathering by the 25th and the window looked smaller and smaller.
At last plan C saw us abandon the sea and drive to Germany - at such short notice we couldn't get an accessible cabin on the Stena ferry to the Hook of Holland, so we made the most of a tunnel crossing by spending a night in Reims and visiting Heidelberg, long on my bucket list, on the way to Germany.
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| Cool beer and an excellent meal in Reims |
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| Swimming in the wonderful Ebsermare pools |
We had a wonderful two weeks in Pretzfeld with glorious weather, in the mid-20s every day. With just me to help, Sam found the stairs up to our apartment even more of a struggle than usual, so his outings were limited, but we enjoyed what we did and I got out every day, usually quite early, to walk, run or cycle in the lovely countryside.
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| Fabulous views |
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| Me on a bench put up by my father many years ago |
One slight hiccup was that Sam hurt the wrist on his good hand towards the end of our stay, which made it hard for him even to get out of bed. Fortunately at Lucilla's suggestion we ordered a wrist support from Amazon.de (German pharmacies don't keep them in stock) and by the day we left Sam was able to descend the stairs fairly easily, phew!
July saw strong winds and really not very nice weather every time we even considered going down to the boat. In mid-July we had a lovely long weekend in Alnwick, Northumberland, visiting our son Ben and his fiancee Anne in Kimberley, outside Nottingham, on our way north. On the Saturday I completed a Macmillan Mighty Hike, raising just under £900 in total for the 26-mile walk. On the Sunday my feet were a bit sore (!) and I couldn't face pushing Sam's wheelchair up and down steep hills, so we drove on a fabulous road from Alnwick to Elsdon, in the Northumberland National Park, and ate ice-creams beside a gibbet with a view.
On the way back we kept to the east of England, following the A19 to York, crossing the Humber Bridge and having a picnic at the southern end before crossing Lincolnshire and Norfolk back to Hoxne. It was a wonderful drive.
We managed one more night on the boat in August and for the first time since it was built managed to access the accessible shower in the "new" SYH shower block, hooray. Our plan was to sail in in early September with Guy, Kai and Ivy, and then with Lucilla and Mark, but when Sam left the boat on 19 August neither of us knew that he would never see it again.
