Back home! Our last two weeks in Europe were as always to short to do all the things that we wanted to and we never get to spent enough time with all of our friends and family.. I went back to Holland to spent another week with my dad and sister. One evening Kim proclaimed that she felt like skiing, so we decided to drive to a big indoor skiing hall in Bottrop, Germany, close to the border of Holland. Spot stayed with some friends and off we went. A good friend of dad joined us on our skiing adventure as well. But as we drove towards Bottrop looking out at the beautiful weather we didn’t really feel like being inside a big hall. So we spontaneously decided to keep driving another 2 hours to go to Winterberg – which is a small skiing area about 5 hours away from dad’s place. It hadn’t been a snowy winter at all and even the entire drive to Winterberg we saw barely any snow. Only the last 10km some snow started to appear. We almost turned around as we just couldn’t believe that there was enough snow to ski. But sure enough, when we were just about 5km out everything around us had turned white. Winterberg is located a bit west of Germany’s centre and somehow geographically privileged in a way that there always happens to be snow before it falls anywhere else in the area. We spent one full day on the ski trails. I decided to join the rest of the group and try skiing instead of snowboarding for the first time in 12 years – and it’s not as easy as it looks! But at the end of the day – after tumbling down a few times and going straight into the woods instead of turning – I did pretty well. We all came back home without any broken bones – It was a great day 😉

From Holland I flew to Stockholm for a presentation at the boat fair. There were various sailors presenting their story but I had a hard time following, as it was all in Swedish.. Luckily I was allowed to give my talk in English – I don’t think the audience would’ve understood my swedish very well 🙂I loved Stockholm, although I had hoped for some snow. But even so far up north was not a single snow flake to be found. Nevertheless it was very cold, which can be quite handy sometimes, like on the morning before the boat show when I went to visit a Hurley 700 for a radio podcast. The owner had forgotten the keys of the marina but – thanks to the cold, we could just walk over the ice towards the boat! Not handy for sailing though… It was lovely being on a Hurley 700 again. It had the typical Hurley smell and the layout was exactly the same as the first Hurley that I sailed on. It brought back a lot of good memories. And I realized how much I loved that boat. Although I did think “it seemed bigger at the time” after standing up straight and hitting my head on the ceiling…I used to be able to stand up straight in the cabin, but those days are over..

Last week we made the long journey home. I actually enjoy flying, but spending two days on a seat, breathing dry, re-circulated air is not my favorite… But saying that – there has to be things in life we don’t like in order to appreciate other things more. Oh! and how I appreciated smelling the warm summer air, and the fresh breeze flowing past my skin. It is lovely being home again! But soon after we came back it started pouring with rain for two days straight. I was afraid that we had missed the summer completely! The rain was accompanied by big wind gusts making Guppy sway from side to side between her poles in the marina. Like a wild horse that wants to run and jump but it is tied up…

Just before the big winds came my new Minicat, the Laura Dekker version arrived and I had a chance to try it out. This 420 version is perfect to sail with two people. I managed to convince Daniel that it would be fun – so off we went. There was a good breeze and we were flying from shore to shore. I was having a great time! Daniel a little less considering the high speeds we where at, that could easily crash us when making a wrong move… although he did agree that it was fun in the end when we were safely back home. I’m afraid it might have to do something with my sailing style?! The 420 is definitely faster than the 310 version! We gave it a good test run in strong winds and bouncing over waves, But I want to go out to do some more ‘test’ sailing soon 😉

For now we are enjoying the calm after the storm with one beautiful sunny day after the other. There is things to do on Guppy (as always) and we will be working on her, while trying to figure out where life will lead us next 🙂

Laura