It's early November and we're splitting up. Dawn is on a mission to do some "boat stuff" shopping in the US. Electronics and hardware is easier to buy in the US as there's far more to choose from. So she's going to make a trip back to stay with her family for a few weeks while collecting some goodies and doing some boat projects...
She'll also coincide her visit with Thanksgiving, the American annual celebration. Her family made her very welcome and laid on a great party or two for her. They even made a Sailing Cake for Dawn!
Her sister Becky was very sweet and took Dawn to see some local sights - and to have a girls night out or two...
Dawn jumped on her Mum's sewing machine and knocked out a shopping roller trolley that will be very handy for carting provisions around in remote marinas.
She also threw together Chloe's WiFi booster system, with an antenna, POE internet switch and a wireless access point. This will allow us to bring Marina wifi into Chloe with a stronger signal than if relying upon an iPhone or iPad.
Peter in the mean time jumped over to Edinburgh to stay with his family. His sister Helen and her twins, Robby and Ruby were happy to see him.
They went on their first fishing trip and Helen caught dinner - plus lots of fresh trout left overs for Charlie the cat.
We shipped Charlie from California when we sold the house last year. Poor Californian Charlie didn't understand what the Scottish snow is all about...
Peter also cut a hole into helen's house. Charlie now has full I/O function.
After successful trips, we both then met up together again in Heathrow where we spent a couple of weeks driving the south of England looking for some good mooring strops in Beer and looking for light wind sails and a RIB in Southhampton.
We also picked up a car full of PV panels that we'd had shipped from California. 3x Sun power 360Watt panels for Chloe's arch.
Next we headed over to Cherbourg together to see how Chloe was getting on.
Ireland will be the last country we plan to visit before moving onto Chloe. We chose Ireland in part because it is not part of the Schengen zone and thus didn't cut into our valuable Schengen visa days.
We flew to Ireland & picked up a car in Dublin and then drove down south, staying in Cork for a few days before heading down to the bottom south west tip to stay with Peter's sister, Jane and fam'.
We stayed in Schull on the south west coast of Ireland. Jane invited us to watch the locals jumping into the sea on Christmas Day, as an annual town fund raiser.
Schull is a very small town full of lovely, small, friendly pubs. We tested them all out.
Our Christmas week's destination was to stay with Peter's sister Jane who is a botanist and professional landscape designer. She had just embarked upon a new landscaping project in her wonderful Irish cottage on the south coast. From her property you can see the famous Fastnet lighthouse.
Man, she's got her work cut out for her - but she loves it and is very good at it.
We're sure it will lead to a fantastic outcome. Plus, We hope she'll make a blog site soon, sharing her wealth of knowledge about plants, gardening and botany.
After Christmas and New Year we started to meander up the West Coast of Ireland...
