Thursday 18 March 2010

Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay

In the spring an old man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of boating (sorry, Alfred). Last spring saw repair of our east dock and with a light winter and gentle melting of the river ice it appears to be solid as ever and ready for another season on Daydream Believer. This picture is from last year - we're a long way from being ready to splash; for one thing, the river is VERY low.

Two years ago, however, the ice significantly tipped our west dock and this is the year to deal with that. Ice tipped the outer pier off its rock footing and the whole outer half of the dock was on about a 30 degree angle. Fortunately, the entire structure was constructed with screws so dismantling was just a matter of keeping the batteries charged on the portable drills. Yesterday I removed most of the decking and today I removed the 6X6 stringers and began to take the pier apart. A quick trip to my welder-man for new pier rods and a new pier will take shape.
Then the stringers and the decking and the staving.

Thursday 11 March 2010

Mediterranean Cruise


We booked a cruise last night, with Norwegian Cruise Lines on the Norwegian Jade. We had been watching a 12-day cruise from Barcelona in November and when the price suddenly jumped $1000 overnight we decided we'd better get with it and book.We decided that the January 2, 2011 departure would be fine - fits into holiday and work schedules and was significantly cheaper than the November cruise. The weather is a little cooler, but there will be fewer tourists at the sights we want to see and the 11 degree day here today was gorgeous. We had already paid a deposit for our next NCL cruise so it was pretty painless to book this one. We have used VacationsToGo for all our cruise bookings and have been very pleased with their service.

Next step was to book a hotel recommended by Rick Steeves (our Europe travel guru) in Barcelona. The Hotel Continental was our choice and we decided that, if we're going to spend New Year's in Barcelona, we should splurge and have a balcony room.

We'll probably take the ship excursion from Alexandria to Cairo - it's a little pricey but includes everything. It's an overnight trip and affords us the opportunity to see the Egypt highlights that are on our 'bucket list'.

More details to follow.

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Gananoque, Ontario, Canada