A week has passed already!

Wow it’s Sunday already … where did the week go.

Monday and Tuesday were in Air Canada’s company …. Vancouver to Toronto, Toronto to Heathrow. Then the longest tube ride ever. Family friends Joan and Eric Bloomfield, invited us to stay with them for the two nights in Monken Hadley at the end of the Picadilly line in Cockfosters. The last time I was in London was sailing and my friend Brett who everytime saw or heard the word (or encountered something funny, one of us tripped or messed up) he’d say Cockfosters! So, of course that stuck and anything that screwed up that day I was heard to say Cockfosters!

The tube maintenance workers were on slowdown so the ride that was supposed to take and hour took nearly three. Once at the end of the line in Cockfosters we called, and Eric arrived to pick us up in a BMW Estate car (station wagon for those of us from Canada). Unbelievably, all of our luggage fit! Also visiting at the time was Bill Phillips – fellow West Vancouverite who had a brief beer and was on his way to a cruise of the Adriatic on a 5 masted sailing ship. After a brief walk and a nap, we were treated to dinner, great conversation and (thankfully) bed.

The next day Joan dropped us off at the tube station for the Northern Line and we went downtown London. We did our best to see the sights in a day – Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the London Eye, the Globe Theatre, Tower Bridge, the Tower of London. After about 10km of walking on a bright hot day we returned to Monken Hadley to another great meal, the end of the England Slovenia match, where England made it through to the final 16, great conversation, and again bed.

Up early the next day we crammed our stuff into two cars this time. Joan had hired a man Geoffrey to take us to the airport and once seeing all our bags decided that Eric would follow with the bags in his BMW. After an hour or so in London traffic using the most convoluted route we arrived at the airport, checked in, had breakfast and made our way to the plane.

A few hours in the air, through Customs (and a harrowing plane change where they held the flight to Split for 40 minutes for us) we arrived in Split, rented the car and headed off to Kremik where the boat is (hopefully) kept.

To our relief / amazement / happiness …. We arrived at Kremik pulled into the parking lot and our boat was in the first slip, with the keys in it, cleaned and ready to go. The kids and Marina went around, in, up and down the boat …. Ross continually saying “this is great .. are you sure it’s the right one”. Everyone was excited and happy that it was all together and in fine shape. We unloaded the hundreds of pounds of luggage onboard, went for dinner and spent our first night aboard the boat.