Toronto, Canada March 9, 2004 Hi Folks, This is my first log in a long time. Most of you received a fall letter from Toronto and a Christmas update (the equivalent of Logs #31a and 31b). There are several people new to my log list who have attended presentations Judy and I have made in the Toronto area. Welcome! I appreciate feedback about what you like and find interesting in my logs. However as we will be returning to Veleda next week, be advised that when E-mailing us do not send attachments, jokes, chain letters, or pictures as the conditions in various countries make downloading such items complicated, expensive or impossible. Our plans are to leave Toronto March 15 to spend 10 days in England visiting friends there and then fly on to Istanbul to board Veleda and get her in the water within a few days. We then will spend some time around the Sea of Marmara and Istanbul waiting for the weather to settle down in mid April when we will head back into the Black Sea. We plan to sail north coasting along Bulgaria for a few weeks, then Romania until the end of May when we will go into the Ukraine for a month or so, going up the Danube delta, around Odessa, then down the Crimean Peninsula to Sevastopol before heading back directly (a 300 mile passage) to Istanbul the end of July. Incidentally, there is a KAYRA Black Sea Rally this summer, but we are not going to wait around for it to depart Istanbul in July, as we will go back down the Dardanelles and along the Turkish Aegean coast to Kusadasi where we want to visit Ephesus, a Biblical city (remember Paul's Letter to the Ephesians in the New Testament?), as well as an ancient Greek and Roman settlement. From there we will enter the Greek Aegean at Samos and work our way down to Crete where we will spend a couple of weeks exploring the island by land and sea. From there in September we will make another long (500 miles) passage to Sicily, going through the Straits of Messina to the Lipari Islands and up the west coast of Italy to winter in a marina just outside of Rome. We are looking forward to getting back on Veleda. We have been back for over 9 months; too long! I will send out another log or two on our experiences back here in Canada and our travels through the States in the nest few weeks and then will start Logs #32 series on our trip around the Black Sea.
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