Another Year of Sailing

Ross at Whitehorse Airport

June 22^nd came quickly this year … I guess no more quickly than in other years. The pace of life just seems to hit overdrive around mid-May as the countdown to cruising season begins. This year we had all of Ross’ graduation events to deal with plus I was, as usual for this time of year, deep in negotiations for a new client. We managed to get much of it done in time and Ross and I took off for the airport with Marina driving us – each of us with a measured bag of slightly less than the 23 Kilo limit and with carry-on bags less than the 8 Kilo limit. Thankfully they didn’t check my computer bag that must have weighed 20 kilos on its own!

Ross enjoying a beer with Pasta in Frankfurt

Our routing this year was a bit goofy … Vancouver to Whitehorse for a 6 hour layover, then onto Frankfurt for a quick overnight, then to Preveza and the boat. Marina’s brother-in-law Mike lives in Whitehorse so we planned to visit him. Unfortunately he was working so he left a car for us at the airport and we drove it downtown to the firehall. As luck would have it he was on a call so we grabbed brunch at a local eatery and waited for him to return. We saw the rescue truck backing into the garage so we went and had a visit with Mike. The firehall is nicely decked out. Mike had a quick workout and we sat and watched some World-cup football for about an hour until another call came in and he had to go – life of a firefighter I guess.

At last at Preveza

We then went and visited his daughter Kestrel at their house for about a half hour – woke her up at 3pm so she is obviously a teenager. Before long we needed to get back the airport and park the car where we found it – interesting story in itself. We then checked our bags in for the long-haul to Frankfurt that left early because all the passengers and baggage were ready, and we took off.

Tara about to be lifted into the water

Eight hours later, not sure if it ever got dark because we had a polar routing, we arrived at Frankfurt – our bags came out promptly and we dragged them off to the Hilton airport hotel – expensive but quite nice and a short walk to the concourse.