happy landings!

It's been a whirlwind of a week - from Switzerland to Milan to Barcelona - all wind related of course. Spent a long weekend in St. Moritz enjoying mates out match racing (and not eating or doing anything else that would devastate the bank account...) with gorgeous morning runs around the alpine lake and a few dips in the 5 star hotel pool (that I most definitely was not staying at! But my mates sailing the event were). An amazing train ride down to Milano for a day of being a tourist - which means vino negro and il duomo and discussions of zombies, "truth" and the Stanford Linear Accelerator with various American backpackers I met at the hostel, before my meeting with the Milan based sailing company about upcoming regattas.

And finally Barcelona - my best mate from Sydney arrives on Wednesday, and I'm here to greet him at the airport. I'm nestled in with a wonderful sailing family that I met previously in France last April. Everyone speaks French and Spanish and a bit of English, so we are all switching back and forth. Tried to follow a tv program in Catalan... not such a success!

Spent the weekend with at the local sailing club and did some training - apparently experienced the windiest day of the season with huge waves! Reminded me of San Francisco. Felt so at home, especially after such a turbulent week... month... months.

In the late afternoon was on board coaching one of the younger skippers, a "how-to" for steering in big waves, and we launched off a huge one into the air! and I had a less than happy landing against the side of the boat before bouncing into the water. Two days later I am looking rather purple.

The happy part of landing has to do with settling into phase (where are we now 8,000?!) of Lulu's life adventure which will be more sailing coaching, racing the world over. Next stop Copenhagen, Munich, Athens, Istanbul...

Doing our very best to take the "poor" out of self-induced poverty one wild adventure at a time.

i draguated!

gimme a kiss!

"XX in the City"

The sailing event took place in the middle of the city...

might be a lull behind that apartment building

gybing action! lightwind on day one... but everyone still had a good time

heading out with lightwind on day 2... i was freaking out "oh no not again..."

but after launching the boats

and sailing around the race area while the race committee set up the course, tada! the breeze popped up from the perfect direction and all was a grand ol' laugh!

Sail Amsterdam faces

tourist day on the rib for the big tour of the harbour, me and norwegian buddies helene and ane

femke and i in the team portraits i organized for the competition

rigging boats in the city centre

the plastic flower boat man, mentioned previously

Sail Amsterdam Festival

Sailing Festival that takes over the city of Amsterdam every 5 years.

The organizing team of the sailing competition we put on as part of the festival cruised the harbour to take in the sights - and took a local news cast crew on board.

when we cruised by this ship there was a small launch entirely covered in plastic flowers that was playing "dutch oldies". the man standing at the helm was holding a tall sign that said, "Applause!"

like the stripes!

meteorology rocks.

Leaving Dover

drying my sails in the backyard up in Tynemouth. a nice bath after getting seriously salty down at the Olympic sailing center in Weymouth.

I made great time down the whole of England, with the exception of the last 20 miles that I spent in bumper to bumper re-routing due to impressive amounts of roadworks. One of the perks of painfully crawling around in first gear was that the detour took all us holiday-makers and professional drivers by Dover Castle. It is a wel-known fact that CASTLES ARE COOL!

Thus far, these white cliffs prove to always “liven” my commute to the continent. This time a glitch in the computer has registered my trailer as part of the reservation (on which there are 2 boats and 12 masts). As usual, French customs stamps you through without lifting their gaze in your direction. I think they assume that no one would ever want to immigrate to France unless they were French – culture outmoding the necessity of border patrol.

At the ticket gate, I am waved aside to check with the ticket agency just there, and see a guy named “Rich”. I pull up and park on the far edge of the lot and as I’m scuttling to the office one 18 wheeler rams into the back of another. Shouts erupt. In the office I explain the trailer situation etc as Rich clacks away on the keyboard, “ah yes! you’re the boat-lady!”

Yes, that would be me. I told him if I got stuck one more time getting through I was going to be very suspicious, I think you just want to see me. The office had a laugh.

Allons-y! It was a clear day and the wind was perfect. You could see France from the onset and I thought, why am I not sailing to France? Instead I’m on a boat, in a car, towing boats – at which point I thought how much I’d like to place a toy car on my boat. Which is of course easier than putting the ferry on the back of a truck.

buon appetito!

rosemary and crushed chili with bit of s and p and olive oil on sweet potatos and cubed onions. mushed up bits of bacon fat, coriander, garam masala, cumin, lime pickle, bit of lemon juice and whole grain mustard and filled under chicken skin. shoved all the leftovers, lemon rind inside chicken. placed on top of bed of potatos, draped bacon strips over the chicken...

yum!

i drank it with a purple grape juice and sparkling water cocktail which i proceeded to kick all over the white carpet and then spent 2 hours scrubbing and soaking and throwing every wives' tale concoction i could think of onto the floor mixed with plenty of "oh LIZZI!'s" and "oh please work!'s"