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The World Cruise of Veleda IV |
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Leaving London April 3, 2000 Departure is planned for 0730 on Wednesday, April 12, in order to take advantage of the high tide which will then start to ebb, giving us an extra few knots going DOWN the Thames. We expect to be off the Medway just as the tide starts to flood again helping to carry us UP the Medway to Chatham where we want to stay at the World Naval Base, the old Royal Navy Dockyards. There is a pontoon dock there that we will stay at for a day or two while we tour the old dockyard. We then will take off to Holland (or Dunkirk), spending a week or two to navigate through the canals of the Netherlands (visiting Amsterdam and several other Dutch towns), out to the Frisian Islands, over to Germany. through the Kiel Canal and into the southern Baltic to Copenhagen in Denmark, then to Helsingborg in Sweden by the middle of May. We will make a brief visit by land to Paris to see Judy’s folks while they are visiting Jacqui, Anders, and little Pierre. In Sweden we plan to visit the family of Judy’s brother-in-law, Dan Warkender, and possibly go over to Latvia to visit other friends and family of John and Rita Goba, friends of ours from the Toronto Hydroplane and Sailing Club. From Sweden we plan to go out the Limfjord Canal in Denmark to the North Sea, and up to some of the Norwegian Fiords near Stavenger or Bergen. From there we will cross the North Sea over to Inverness in Scotland for the beginning of June where we plan to rendezvous with Judy Johnson, a friend from Vancouver. After transiting the Caledonian Canal which crosses Scotland going through Loch Ness, we will sail the west coast islands, around the Highlands, and the Hebrides. After a month or so in this beautiful part of the world, we will head down the Irish Sea, visiting ports in Ireland and Wales en route, to get down to the Scilly Islands off Cornwall by the end of August. After a few days there, we will go back into the English Channel, over to the Channel Islands for another week or so before proceeding around the Cherbourg Peninsula to Le Havre for the end of September. In Le Havre we will drop our mast in preparation for going through the French canals and rivers. Shipping the mast down to Marseilles is an option we will seriously explore, as it will save us several weeks of navigation with it strapped on deck as we did when we went down the Mississippi River in 1998. From Le Havre we will go through to Paris to visit Jacqui, Judy’s sister, and of course her little Pierre who was born on my birthday, July 19, while we were coming across the Atlantic Ocean last year. We expect to get there by mid October. We could do it faster (four or five days), but we plan to enjoy leisurely our meandering through France. From Paris we will proceed up the Seine, through more canals over to the Rhone, down through Lyon and Avignon, coming to the Mediterranean near Marseilles in late November or early December. In the Med, we hope to keep sailing rather than spending the rest of the winter in one port. Exactly where we will go is still up in the air. We want to get in to WARM areas, after having spent one winter in London. We may go west to Barcelona and the Balearic Islands, or more likely south east down to Malta and possibly Tunisia, making our way eastward to be in the Ionian Sea and the Greek Ionian Islands in early spring, going up into the Adriatic and the Croatian coast late spring and early summer of 2001. All reports we have read and heard say the Dalmatian coast and the Croatian coastline are safe from the turmoil affecting the former Yugoslavia. Later we will go back to Greece, and sail the Greek Aegean Sea for the rest of the summer and early fall. We are not sure about the winter of 2001. We may spend it in Israel as the warmest place in the Med, or we may continue to sail the winter through in the western Med, weather permitting. There is an Eastern Mediterranean Rally each spring which we may take the spring of 2002 which goes around Greece and Turkey, and hopefully up into the Black Sea. Where from there, who knows? This is an extensive itinerary for the next two years. It will be interesting to see how closely we approximate it. This past year we had not originally planned to winter in London, but shifted our plans to better enjoy the U.K. rather than rushing around it in one summer. However, this year our priority is to be in the Med and warmer climes for the winter. We will probably spend at least two years in the Med, and exit out through Gibraltar rather than the Suez. It must sound exotic, especially for those of you who have not had the opportunity for much international travel. It is! We frequently have to pinch ourselves to establish that this is our good fortune to have this lifestyle and our fantastic opportunity to see the world. However, one of the reasons I am writing these logs, as well as to share our travels with others, is to encourage people to dream and to work towards making their dreams come true. We are not rich in terms of financial wealth, but we have accepted what life has given us, both the good and the not so good, and made the necessary adjustments and decisions to realize a dream we have both had for some time. My theme is "You can do it!" You are only in this life once. Go for it! Next Log |
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