Hello to everyone from Los Altos Hills!!!! Yes, we got home October 15th and it feels great to be home. We were home for just over a week then we had to go to Florida for 5 days. We are now home for a while I hope. I'm sorry it has taken me so long to get this last trip update sent out. I've been pretty busy since we've been home and I kept forgetting to send it.

Thank you all for sharing our trip with us. Looking back now I can't believe all the wonderful experiences we had. I'll try to get the pictures put in an album soon (it probably won't be that soon since we are now into the holiday season) so when we start seeing you all we can share them with you, if you want.

We were fortunate enough to have "Celerity" sold by the time we finished our trip and docked in Mallorca, Spain. She now belongs to a nice couple who live in Sausalito. They promised us if they ever bring her to the bay we can come and see her. Our new boat should be ready by October 15, 2001. We will take delivery of her in Finland and sail her to the Carribean. We have decided to name her "Song of the Sea", so you can expect to get greetings from "Song of the Sea" from the Carribean.

Hope to see you all soon,

Love,

Gaymond and Cindy

It is Saturday morning, we officially checked out of Turkey, picked up a few provisions and set sail for Rhodos, Greece. It is about 30 miles. We didn't put our wind dodger up and since there was water and spray coming over the front of the boat we were pretty much covered with salt by the time we got there. All in all it was a pretty nice and fast sail. We managed to get a berth in the main harbor right near the "Old Town" of Rhodos. We were sitting down below in the salon when I heard a knocking coming from the back of the boat. I climbed up to see who it was and was pleasantly surprised to see it was our friend Ulf, whom we had been meeting with the day before in Marmaris. He said he was walking by the harbor and saw our American flag and though it might be us since he knew we were sailing over. We cleaned up a bit and walked into "Old Town" with him and had dinner at a restaurant on the square. Gaymond was pretty tired so he stayed behind and went to bed early. The "Old Town" was really interesting, it has the original rock wall, probably 40' high still around it. The streets are all cobblestone, a little difficult to walk on, but it adds a lot of charm. It is basically a tourist area now so there are lots of cute little shops selling various things that tourist buy. You didn't mind walking around because the vendors were not pestering you to go in and buy from their shop. There were also lots of restaurants and of course bars. After dinner we said our good byes to Ulf and went back to the boat. We were pretty tired.

The next month we basically will be trying to make good time getting the boat back to Southern France or Mallorca (still not sure which). The next day we went to the island of Tilos, which was about 40 miles away. We anchored and spent the night. We did not even get off the boat. From here we went 55 miles west to the island of Astipalaia. Again we anchored in a bay and spent the night. We needed some bread and vegetables before continuing on, so we decided to anchor in front of town, get what we needed and then continue on. We went into town and fell in love with it. We ended up spending the whole day there. We didn't return to the boat until about 6:30pm. Gaymond and I both went to the only beauty parlor on the island. Believe me, it was much needed for both of us! We then had a great lunch. We met the town Pelican named Yanni and played with him for most of the afternoon. We even went to the town fish market and bought him some fish to feed him. He was about 4 feet tall. He was the lightest shade of pink and so very soft. He was very tame and let you pet him. His long neck was the softest part of him. He ate all the fish except for one. I guess that one wasn't to his liking. We asked him if he wanted to come back to America with us, but he must not have understood English. Can you see him with Bonnie and Clyde and Tinker, or walking down the streets of Los Altos. It would be great. The only problem is that we'd need a daily supply of live fish. We said our good byes to Yanni. I'm sure the towns people though we were crazy, maybe we are. We left the harbor and spent the night in a bay on the other side of the island before heading out the next day to the island of Santorini.

Santorini is as beautiful and magical as the books say. Santorini is a crescent shaped island that owes its shape to prehistoric volcano activity. There were originally 3 limestone rock islands in this part of the Aegean. The 3 islands were surrounded by lava until they slowly formed one large round island. In around 1500 B.C. a volcanic eruption caused the central section of the island to completely submerge causing the sea to rush in and making the three islands that form the crescent shape around this body of water. Due to volcanic action over time two small islands have been formed in the center of the caldera. It is almost spooky sailing into the caldera knowing that you are in an area that was once land and has been blown away due to a volcano. We somehow managed to find the 1 spot where you could drop an anchor and take a line back to a pier. It is virtually impossible to anchor due to the depths in the caldera. There was one large mooring bouy that all the boats were suppose to tie up to and then take a line to shore. You can image the mess if you are in the middle and want to leave. The ferry and cruise ship traffic was unbelievable, we stayed on the boat until we were sure it would not get damaged by the giant swell these boats were causing. From the inside of the caldera to the towns on Santorini it is straight up. Large cliffs. There were two ways to get up. A team of stinky donkeys taking you up along a cobblestone path that smelled really bad of donkeys or a ski lift type cable tram that had 6 gondolas on it, with each gondola holding 6 people. I'm grateful I don't have a fear of heights; there was no way I was taking the donkeys up. Once on top we found a cab and told him we wanted a tour of the island. He drove us all around telling us the history of the island. He took us to a winery. The wines were just so so (California wines are so much better), took us to a black sand beach, to the prehistoric city of Thera; they are currently doing an archeological dig. It was interesting to watch this being done. We ended up at a darling city at one end of the island called Oia. We thanked him and told him we wanted to spend the afternoon here. I think we took 2 rolls of film in this small town. It was so charming and the view was spectacular. That evening we all went to dinner at a restaurant that was supposedly really good. Unfortunately that was not our experience. We've had so many good dinners that you have to expect a bad one on occasion.

We looked closely at the weather to decide which route to take across Greece to start our journey home. We had originally planned to take the southern route but due to storms and winds we decided to take the route through the Corinth Canel back across to Italy. We got up early and started sailing. The winds were great for us. We had initially planned to sail to an island 65 miles away, but the winds were so favorable we ended up going 80 miles that day. This ended up being a great day in addition to a wonderful sail my husband caught a good size tuna for us, yea tuna for dinner. Up early again the next morning (6:30am - still dark). We brought up the anchor and headed out. Winds were still good so we got the sails up and just started to relax when both of Gaymond's fishing poles started reeling out. Silly me, I though they had got caught on each and that was why they were going out, but NO, each one had a fish. He pulled in one and I had to pull in the other. Thank God they didn't fight hard, they were actually pretty easy to pull in. Our freezer was now FULL OF TUNA. With that little excitement behind us, we got busy with the matters at hand. We got to the Canal around 3:00pm. We tied up to the dock and went to pay. We just missed the westbound traffic. We had to wait around 2 hours before we were able go though. It is so narrow that it is open to one way traffic at a time. By the time we got to the other side of the canal it was dark and the wind was really blowing. We wanted to anchor in front of the city of Corinth but there were white caps and it was not protected at all. We ended up going to a city on the north side of the canal and anchoring off the beach. It was not great, but it was better then the south side. I hadn't taken anything out for dinner and the easiest thing to thaw was fish, so once again we had fish for dinner. I had left over tuna for lunch so that was now 3 meals of tuna for me. I was already tired of tuna. The wind had died by morning, we actually had to motor to the town of Galaxidi which was 1/2 way down the gulf of Corinth. We wanted to spend two nights here to rest and restock before making our crossing over to Italy. From our prior visit to Galaxidi we had grown to like this town and the people. They didn't let us down, they seemed to go out of their way to be helpful and pleasant to us. We will always have fond memories of this town.

We got a few last minute items before starting our 2 day journey to Italy. We motored out the gulf. Once we were out of the gulf, we were going past a few of the islands in the Ionian when the wind picked up so we raised the sails. We assigned shifts around the clock so that we all knew when we had to be on watch and when we could sleep. Gaymond and I had the 8:00pm to midnight shift. Everyone else was asleep. We were passing between the islands of Kefallonia and Zakinthos. It was around 11:00pm and we were sailing at a speed of 8.5 knots. Gaymond and I were lying down in the cockpit with a blanket over us since it was cold. I was actually kind of dozing. All of a sudden there was this torrential downpour. I grabbed the blanket and threw it down in the salon. He reached back and pushed down the hatches to our room. We picked up all the cushions and put them up under the wind dodger/bimini top to keep them dry. I have never seen it raining so hard. The water was coming down the main sail onto our bimini top and pouring into the cockpit. We were laughing because this all happened so fast. We looked like drowned rats. I went down to get into dry clothes and saw that our bed was wet. Here it was midnight and I had to change sheets. It only lasted for about 30 minutes, but boy did it come down. That night the wind kept picking up. We had to double reef the main and jib by the time the night was over. Needless to say none of us got a good night sleep that night The next morning the winds started subsiding, buy the end of the day we were motoring. We motored until we docked in the Southern Italian town of Vibo Valencia.

We washed the boat down then set off to explore the town. We were back in the land of afternoon siestas. The whole town was closed. They close from 2:00 - 5:00. Grocery stores, retail stores, banks, post offices, everything. We did manage to find a place to get a cappuccino and that was about it. We went back to the boat and had cocktails with the crew until it was time to go back to town for dinner. After dinner we went to bed early since we were tired. We were rudely awaken at 2:00AM by our very drunk neighbors. They were singing and being really loud. I asked them to be quiet and they just moved to the front of their boat. They ended up taking off their clothes and jumping in the water still being very loud. The dog that lived at the dock was very upset and barking continuously at them. They loudly kept calling his name "Billie." I was up there telling them to go to bed. Gaymond had to come up and tell them to quiet down and go to bed. They finally calmed down and we ended up going back to bed, but it was hard to go back to sleep right away.

The next morning we continued on up the Italian coast. We basically tried to go as many miles as we could. We anchored in a bay of a town called Diamante. The next morning we continued on. We had a very long day. We left at 7:00 AM and sailed until we got to Agropoli at 9:30PM. We got the only dock space left, which was really to small for us. We squeezed in and pick up the front mooring line which you are suppose to tie to the cleat at the very front of your boat. It keeps your bow from being blown around, except that our boat was longer then this line could handle. It was late and we were all tired and we didn't really want to continue on, luckily the dock hand was intelligent in this case and he got across to us (in sharade method, since he didn't speak English and we don't speak Italian) that we could bring the line back to the cleat in the middle of our boat. We picked up another mooring line so we had one on each side of the boat, this worked only because it was not real windy in the harbor.

We continued north the next morning and ended up in what I believe is my favorite area of the entire trip, the Amalfi Coast. We managed to get a berth in the harbor. This is the absolute worst place to have your boat since there are ferries that come in and leave about every 15 minutes. They come in and leave really fast, so you have huge waves rocking your boat from side to side and your passerelle (plank that lets you walk off your boat to the dock) keeps banging the cement dock. It is not very comfortable. It is very late in the tourist season here so we thought the town would not be very crowded but to our surprise there were still tons of tourist. We walked around town and then sat at an outside bar in the main square and people watched, one of our more favorite things to do. This is the town that has the beautiful cathedral where St. Andrew's remains are. It was a Saturday afternoon so I let everyone know that I wanted to attend Sunday Mass in the morning before heading off. We took the crew out to our favorite restaurant in Amalfi. The food was delicious and the owner is more then delightful, he is so very entertaining and expressive. The next morning Gaymond and I got up early, dressed in our Sunday best and went to town and had cappuccinos and croissants in the square. We walked to church just a few minutes early. It was really full, but we did manage to find seats about 1/2 way up. I wish you all could see this cathedral; it is so beautiful. I felt lucky to have this opportunity to attend mass here. I have so much to be thankful for, I wanted to use this opportunity to thank God for keeping us safe and allowing us to have this wonderful summer. The mass started and there must have been 18 alter boys leading the 3 priests in. Of course it was all in Italian. One of the priests spoke French and did one of the readings in French. It seemed really long only because we could not understand a word that was said, but I was still grateful for the opportunity to attend mass there. We left Amalfi as soon as we got back to the boat. We sailed along the coast until it was time to go west to the island of Capri. We again were lucky to get a berth, a boat just happened to leave as we got there. We took our crew out to dinner again to the restaurant that was in the lemon grove. We discovered it when we came through Capri earlier in the year and wanted to go back again. Dinner was delicious and our crew thought it was fun. The next morning Gaymond and I decided to hit the shops. We already pretty much knew our way around town having been here in June. Since winter is coming I just had to have cashmere. I found this beautiful lavender twin set in one of the very exclusive shops. The underneath sweater is a turtleneck and sleevless. It is in a cable stitch. The cardigan is a regular knit with buttons. They are both really soft. After this purchase we went and sat in the bar of the famous 5 star hotel in the center of town. We had a cappucino and watched all the rich and beautiful people. From here we went to one of the 3 Ferragamo stores and I got a cashmere cape with a hood. It too is amazingly soft. I didn't even ask the price, in these stores if you have to ask you can't afford it. There was this really unique hand bag that Gaymond wanted me to get but I was afraid that we had already done enough damage. I'm still not accustomed to being outrageous when I shop. Another year and I should be other that, maybe. We asked for the names of the best restaurants in town and were given two names. It was almost lunch time so we decided to go to one for lunch and one for dinner. We walked outside the store and ran into Mike Chambreau and asked him to join us for lunch. We walked through the alleys and found the restaurant named Gemma's, we were not disappointed, the food was wonderful. After lunch we decided go back and get the handbag. What a lucky person I am. Now I need shoes to match. Just kidding!!! We decided to find the other restaurant and make dinner reservations. We were glad we did because we got one of the last tables. Mike decided to head off on his own and go exploring and Gaymond and I headed back to the boat. That evening the 3 of us again headed to the restaurant that was recommended, La Capannina. Again, we were not disappointed. The service and food were beyond expectations. I could come to Capri just to try all the restaurants. The Italian food here is better than I've had anywhere.

The next morning we continued north again to the island of Ischia spent the night then continued north to the island of Ponza. We were going to spend the night here then start our journey across to Sardinia, but mother nature had other plans. A windstorm came up and we would be beating into force 7 (28-33 mps) winds. We decided to stay put and wait out the storm. Luckily it let up the following day. The winds stopped but the seas take a while to settle down. We took off around 10:00am, this would be around a 24 hour trip. The swells were really big, more like the Pacific Ocean. Nothing like we had seen in the Mediterannean. I though it was kind of fun. It was like being on a roller coaster ride up then down, then up then down. After a while the winds picked up but not to bad. We were making a steady 8.5 knots which is really good. It was in the evening around 8:00pm, Gaymond was just starting his 4 hour shift. Everyone was asleep except Michael McGrath who Gaymond was taking over from. I was going to be up from 9:00pm to 2:00am, so I was asleep. Just as Gaymond took over our autopilot broke, which meant that we had to hand steer all the time. This also meant that we had to have 2 people up all the time. It is very difficult to keep a boat on course (especially at night) and watch the ship/boat traffic and figure out which direction they are going and if they are going to pass in front or behind you and what your course of action needs to be. With the autopilot steering the boat one person could watch the traffic and make course changes but you can't do both especially at night. In rough seas it is also difficult on your arms to be hand steering for four hours. We managed to get to Porto Rotondo around 7:00AM. It was an exciting night for all of us. After getting settled at the dock we all got our much needed sleep. We woke up a few hours later and Gaymond got right to working on figuring out what was wrong. A few hours of trouble shooting and he figured out that there is a very specialized hydraulic solenoid that burned out. He made a few phone calls and found out that the part comes from England. It was a Saturday, so we couldn't contact the company until Monday, and it would take 5 days at best before we could get the part. What to do???? We knew we had at least a 3 day window of good weather. If you have to hand steer you want good weather. If we waited for the part, it would be five days, then who knew what the weather would be like. There could be a storm and we could be delayed longer. We needed to be back to Mallorca by October 1st for several reasons. We had 1 30-35 hour passage and 2 10 -12 hours passages ahead of us to get back to Mallorca. We sat down discussed the options with our crew, then tried working out schedules of how we would have 2 people on 24 hours a day with only 5 people. We came up with something we all felt comfortable with and decided to go for it.

We decided to go to the western tip of Sardinia which was about 75 miles. We went to the fuel dock first and got the last 400 liters they had (Europe is having a bit of a problem with fuel right now). It was a long day, but we did just fine, which I think built everyone confidences up that we could handle it just fine. We checked the weather and decided that we needed to do our crossing to Menorca the next day. We felt that we had a break in the weather and that it would be nice for the next couple of days. We set sail about 8:30 AM. I had a headache but though it would pass. The weather was nice, you could feel that is was autumn. The sky was blue, but it was definitely getting cooler. It was nice after the incredibly hot summer we experienced. The seas were pretty flat which made it pretty easy to hand steer. My headache got worse as the day went on and by late afternoon, I was sick. I was no longer able to help. I was pretty much in bed or the bathroom. I was suppose to be on with Gaymond and Mike C for 5 hours from 8:30pm to 1:30am. Poor guys had to be alone, but there was no way I could help. It turned out to be a very easy passage, the seas were so kindly and there really wasn't any ship traffic. We got to Menorca the next day around noon. I was feeling better, but I had no desire to leave the boat. I just wanted to rest and not be far from the bathroom. The crew went into town for dinner, but Gaymond made me a nice Mahi Mahi fish dinner with fish he had caught on our crossing. It was very nice. The next day I was feeling better so we went into town. We pretty much know this town, so it was easy for us to get around. We had fun window shopping. We didn't get anything at the time, but once we got back to the boat, I did wish I had made a few purchases. There is always next time. I had asked the port boy for a restaurant suggestion. We had never found a good one here. We didn't have much hope but decided to try it. We were very pleasantly surprised. Our meal and service were excellent. My husband of course had Lobster and I, being very homesick at this point decided to have Salmon. They had it on the menu and it always reminds me of home. This salmon was Norweigen, not Pacific, but it still tasted good.

We left early the next morning for our crossing from Menorca to the northern tip of Mallorca a 65 mile day. It was a cool day and it looked like it was going to rain. You definitely needed to be bundled up when you were up in the cockpit. We each took our turn at the wheel. We ended up anchoring in a beautiful bay. It was all wooded. There was a little island next to shore. We tucked in behind the island as close as we could. There was a lot of swell and we were trying to find as calm a spot as we could. Once we were anchored Jean went swimming. She dove on our anchor, came up, and assured us that our anchor was definitely set. That night at 4:00AM I was awoken by the wind. It was really blowing. I got up to look out the window. It was pitch black, but there was a boat right up next to us. I got Gaymond and we went up to check it out. The wind was blowing 30 knots. This German boat must have been dragging their anchor and got it caught on ours. They were going from side to side, very close to us. They were trying to get their anchor up. Our whole crew came up to try to fend off this boat. It was very cold. I was in my jammies. I went down to get us some coats. Good thing, it started raining very hard. We were all on deck just getting soaked. The German boat finally got free we all got in the cockpit under the bimini top very relieved to have that boat away from us. It was still really blowing and really raining. Gaymond noticed that we were now sideways to the wind instead of bow into the wind and that we were now in 16 meters of water instead of 5 meters like we were when we anchored. Since it was pitch black we had not noticed that we were drifting very badly. That boat had unanchored us. Gaymond started the engine. He figured out where the most protected part of the bay was with regard to the terrible wind. He used the GPS and radar to get us there. It was so dark and it was raining so hard we could not see a thing. Michael and I were at the front of the boat to make sure we didn't run over any little boats that may have been anchored. We got close enough to shore and dropped our anchor. Thank God it took on the first try. We stayed up long enough to make sure we were OK and then went down below. This little incident took 11/2 hours. We were soaked, we dried off, changed and went to bed. We had lost so much body heat it took a long time before we warmed up again. I guess that is just part of sailing.

The next day we sailed about 45 miles to Porto Colome. This was our last stop before final destination of Palma. We got news that our "Celerity" had been sold and that the new buyers wanted to see her Tuesday evening then take her out for sea trials on Wednesday. We would be getting into Palma the next afternoon which was Saturday. That was only giving us 2 1/2 days to get all our stuff packed and off the boat and get the boat cleaned up and looking brand new. We arranged to have boxes waiting for us at the dock and to have some help getting the boat cleaned up. While we were here in Porto Colome, I got in the dingy and cleaned the hull. I was feeling a lot of pressure and wanted to start doing things that I could do before getting to Palma. We had a nice trip into Palma. It was a beautiful day. We arrived around 2:30 in the afternoon. Our slip was right in front of the yacht club. Once we were all settled into our slip, we got our last bottle of champagne and all toasted to the end of our wonderful trip.

We spent the next week and a half cleaning up the boat and dealing with the sale of Celerity. It was sad for us because we have a lot of good memories on Celerity, but we don't need two cruising yachts.

We said our goodbyes to our friends in Palma and left for Finland early Tuesday morning (10/10). We arrived in Pietarsaari around 8:00PM Tuesday evening. Our friend Ulf met us at the airport and escorted us to our hotel. We spent the next three days meeting with the interior designer and builders of our new boat. It is really exciting. We have the interior layout all decided. Building this new boat will keep us very busy this next year. We need to make decisions not only on how we want the interior to look, but also what navigation equipment and sail configuration we want.. We were able to see our hull; they have just completed it. They have started putting the bulkheads in. They only had a few in, so it basically looked like a very large empty hull. We climbed up a ladder about 18 ft and then down to the inside of our hull. It was neat standing there knowing that 1 year from now we will be standing in it and it will be very different. They took us to another building where they were working on our deck. They were still putting fiberglass on a few areas but they were very close to being done with the deck as far as the fiberglass is concerned. We also went to the woodshop where they make all the furniture and interior walls for all the boats they build. I wish you could have seen Gaymond's face. His smile was huge, he just loves the smell of all the wood, and seeing all the different woodworking equipment. We spent a lot of time looking at different wood veneers. We want to have wood inlays in the furniture for our boat. It is all very exciting.

After our meetings with the people at Nautor Swan it was finally time to come home. I was so excited I could hardly stand it. It took us many hours to get home, but we are finally home.

Our adventure is over and we had a wonderful time. I'm glad we were able to share it not only with our friends who were able to join us but also all our family and friends who shared our experiences through my email.