Season 2018 Shakedown Cruise to Bosa

Boat owners know there is always thousand and one thing to be done on a boat. The 'to-do' list normally gets longer and longer towards the end of the season although smaller repairs are done on the spot whenever possible. Consequently, there is a lot of work left for the beginning of the season, some start already during the winter break with looking for possible solutions and ordering and arranging shipment of spare parts.

Last winter T-Fish was onshore, 'high and dry'. Before putting her back into waters, she received a new anti-fouling coating and a two component hull polish. This means - washing the hull, applying the first component, applying the second component and then polishing, thus 4 times hull treatment, all by hand. For someone used to work in front of a computer indeed heavy work. I felt each bone of my body afterwards. Furthermore, in addition to smaller repairs here and there, the engine and gear box oil was exchanged and new filters as well as a new starter battery installed.

T-Fish has a new home port now which was required for the renewal of her registration and to be compliant with the changed German rules (if a boat sails under German flag, it must have a German home port now). The new home port is Berlin, although T-Fish never was there. We lived a couple of years in this exciting city, some 25 years ago and our first daughter was born and is now studying in Berlin. We love the city and who knows, maybe T-Fish one day will come home to a home she doesn't know yet.

After all the work done at the beginning of the season, there is no wonder that boat owner cannot await to take her out for the first time. And there is no wonder to see this glow in their eyes when she is smoothly ploughing through the seas, in an speed which appears record breaking (but which in fact is just some 0.5 - 1.0 kn faster than she usually sails). Anyway, this is how it is.

My season's shakedown cruise brought us to Bosa, Sardinia, some 23 nm south of Fertilia. The crew was my old friend Charly and a Chinese exchange student who was on a sailing boat the first time in her life. She coped well with the seas and I think that she enjoyed the experience. Take a look yourself and enjoy the video.

Singapore & Bintan Island Video - finally ready to share

Here the video of our vacation over the Easter holidays in Singapore and on Bintan Island. It is mainly meant for family members and close friends and is not related to sailing on T-Fish.

In fact it is the result of my first larger video project which I used to become acquantaint with a professional video editing software (I am amazed about the functionality which basically leave anything open for your creativity although sometimes it requires to dive deep into hidden software tools). Certainly not perfect but I am happy with the result.

There was about 80GB of footage to work with which is also a challenge. The video (about 20 min) took about 4 hours to render in HD / 60fps on my machine ( Intel Core i5-6300 CPU @ 2,4 GHz, 8GB RAM) which is OK but considering that I had to render 7x in total as there is always something which you only detect when looking at the final result, it indeed is a long process. This puts sailing vlogs such as La Vagabonde or SV Delos, who continuously produce videos from their sailing adventures around the world, in a different perspective. It seems they are also hard working and not only having fun......

Long time no hear...

It's been a while since I last updated the blog but, honestly, there was not much happening concerning sailing since we left T-Fish after our summer vacations. My daughter and her boyfriend used T-Fish for a vacation week in Sardegna as a 'dacha' but that's it basically. Soon afterwards T-Fish was put onshore, 'high and dry', for the winter season while I moved back from Rome to Brussels and got acquaintained with my new job.

Badlands National Park, South Dakota, US

A few business trips brought me to the U.S., where I also could enjoy the scenary of the 'Great Plains' and 'Black Hills' on a bus ride from Sioux Falls to Rapid City. I was in particular impressed by the 'Badlands National Park' which got it name from extreme temperatures, lack of water, and the exposed rugged terrain which is one of the world’s richest fossil beds. I also was able to get a gimpse on 'Mount Rushmore', on the way rushing to the airport and heading back to Europe.

Autumn last year, we were busy raising our temporal new family members, two white Golden Retrievers, a girl and a boy, the 'product' of our dog 'Blanche' and her Bavarian lover 'Charly' (yes, indeed, he is living close to Munich!). The whole undertaking indeed was very stressful and extremely emotional with a very difficult birth giving. It is amazing how these cute, tiny animals can turn your house upside down in just a few minutes. It definitely was an experience which we do not want to miss as a family even though we all share the opinion that this must stay a one-off experience. Take a look how cute they are which of course made it very difficult to say GoodBye shortly after Christmas. What helps is knowing that they are in very good hands now....   

The winter season in Belgium was really a challenge this year (I guess this is true for every year). It was in particular cloudy, grey-in-grey, without hardly any light for weeks. I think it was even the darkest period ever recorded in Belgium.

Consequently, there was an urgent need to refill our body with 'Vitamin D' over the Easter vacations. We therefore decided to spend one week sightseeing in Singapore and one week in a holiday resort on Bintan Island, Indonesia, a luxury vacations in the tropics which we really enjoyed. A movie is in the making which we soon will share with broader family members and close friends. 

When writing this blog entry, I already had visited T-Fish in Alghero twice, a couple of days preparing it for the new season and putting it back into the water, and one week for this season's shakedown cruise along the Sardinian coast. More to come soon......