Lost Luggage

 Jessie had a challenge at the Vancouver airport since her flight to the UK was July 2023 and her return flight was Jun 2024. That exceeds the length of time you can stay in the UK without a visa. She was totally prepared and had her follow-on flight to Greece well documented but that seemed to be beyond the Air Canada system’s ability to process. After a harrowing hour in line at the Vancouver Airport, we finally got her checked into the flight. Thankfully we were at YVR with plenty of time to spare so we easily made our flight to Montreal and the connecting Montreal to Heathrow leg. We made it. My bag made it, but Jessie’s bag didn’t. That was August 29th.

Lucky I packed 10 meters of rope to tie that bag to the scooter

After numerous phone calls to Air Canada baggage services (and I use the word service quite liberally here), Jess was assured her bag would be in Preveza on the 31st, but they didn’t know flights to PVK from Heathrow come on Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday.The challenge was that we were not connecting to an Air Canada affiliate flight so Air Canada thought they needed to send the bag to Heathrow, which they did, but it took a while for them to realize that Preveza is in another country 1000+Km’s away and they needed to send the bag on BA to get it to PVK. Well to make a long story short, that did not happen for about a week. We reckon that her bag had a lovely London holiday.

I was really impressed how Jess kept it together after getting the runaround and having to make about a dozen phone calls, many of which included lengthy waits to talk to an agent. Check the website they would say. You mean the website that never is updated? She received information, disinformation, assurances, and disappointment. She finally got a call on Sunday the 6th that the bag was at PVK, so I went and rented a scooter and rode it to the airport to pick it up. When I got there the Greek airport computer didn’t know about her bag (uh oh). The agent who was helping me walked to another computer terminal in the building. I went with her and luckily, I saw the bag sitting there on the floor and said “there it is!”

Jess happy to have her wardrobe back

She was very happy to have more than one swim suit and to be able to wear clothes other than her mother’s boat duds.

Tara’s 2023 Starts

After about 24 hours of travelling, Jess and I arrived at Cleopatra and put our luggage onto Tara and started the cleaning and reanimating process. 

Hooking up the aircon. Priority #1

The first two things we typically do is connect the batteries and the shore power. This lets us get refrigeration and run the portable air conditioner we bought a couple of years ago.

It is best to do the on-deck work either early or late unless you want to bake in the sun

JJ the best teak scrubber in the business

We did a good job cleaning up the boat The teak really gets filthy and requires a lot of scrubbing that Jess took to with vigour. A day and a half of steady work and we were ready to go into the water. First order of business is to raise the jib as it is frightening to do that on land. Once the sails were up, we were good to go … all the way to Preveza (About a 1/2 mile) and we backed into the quay with about 50 meters of chain out, and then filled up with water, groceries, ice and booze and we were ready to go. First stop, Ormos Varkiou.

Tied up safely at the quay in Preveza

2023, back blogging after a bit of a Hiatus

I has been quite a while since we’ve updated our Blog, like four years. One of the challenges with Covid and the missing year is that so many other things changed, we were busy and we fell out of our routine.

Kida lived in West Van but always loved the snow

Meeting Ross at the Peach Arch Park that never closed let us see him for the first time in more than 6 months. All bagged up and masked. How easy it is to forget how difficult the COVID times were.

Both Jess and Ross have graduated from university, Ross moved to the USA, did his Masters in California and got a job in Phoenix. JJ moved to Calgary to start her career and got a dog, (little) Joe. Our dog Kida lost her fight with cancer, and we got our new dog Woodley. Marina guided her tennis club through the difficult Covid period as President and managed to keep the club open and available for play in spite of some folks who seemed determined to defy the rules set down by the Provincial Health Officer. I continued to work but part time instead of full-time, which I have adjusted to quite well.

Meanwhile Tara stayed in Cleopatra across from Preveza. We had abbreviated trips in 2021 and 2022 with a total of two weeks each year, and this year we (I) decided to take a longer trip since I am between assignments. With Marina working and me not, it seemed like an ideal time to head to the boat. Add to that Jessie and Kyle deciding to take a travel year in Europe, I had my partner to get the boat ready, and then put it away too. The only real drag is that we need to leave the dogs at home, which meant that Marina wasn’t going to come for as long which sucks.

Joe is quite a character. To play with him and a ball you must have two since he will not share.

It turns out that Woodley and Joe are the best of friends and love to spend time with one another whenever they can