vacation 2014

Sure an interesting summer. Cool weather and more rain than usual. Good summer weather for Holland though. Speaking of The Netherlands ... once again we followed the world cup football and hoped. Really encouraged by the game against Spain and then something went wrong. However, once again we beat Brazil. There. Our claim to fame. After that Trijny, our Dutch sister in law, arrived and stayed with us for a few days. Only one picture. We slept, and read and talked. Had some plans to go out, but the weather and my car breaking down threw in a spoiler there. Still a really good time.

Then off we went for our yearly sailing adventure, which, due to winds and waves AND temperature (water and air) were changed on the go. First day, instead of doing this epic travel for 10 hours or so, and getting well on our way to the North Channel, was shortened to 3 hours, going through the small craft channel, where winds and waves were pleasant. Enough wind there for a tall ship, The Pathfinder, to sail down stream.

Found ourselves 2 days later in an anchorage all by ourselves in the Massasauga Park, stayed there for a few days, and decided that we would just stay in local waters, i.e. a 6-8 hours sail away from our home marina, and chill and enjoy and sail and go to the marina whenever really foul weather were to happen and/or there was a need for provisions, and not head into 1.5 meter waves with the winds right on the nose for 5 days to swim in 64F water somewhere in the North Channel.
Had a great 3 weeks with road trips when there were a few days of rain. One of the anchorages is the home of humming birds and we had a feeder hanging on the davits of the boat. Great to see them. Took it down 1 day before we left to prevent them from wasting energy on following us. Her a pictures of some nice sailing, a sunset and mentioned birds.

We also visited friends who had just bought a gorgeous waterfront cottage on a few acres of land.

Here some pictures of that, and notice the troll in the tree.