My London

Last week I was in London on business. London is my favourite big town. Well, probably favourite town in all categories. I was so glad to be back. I spent every free moment walking through London for hours in all possible directions, even though the weather was pretty cold and rainy.

Rain coming over the London Bridge

Tower of London

Tower Bridge after the rain...

... with a rainbow.

St Katharine Docks from the Boat House, my favourite place to have a snack and a cup of tea

On Wednesday the weather finally improved and in the afternoon I walked through sunny London. This is where I worked - in the beautiful Royal Exchange building in the middle

Royal Courts of Justice

Trafalgar Square framed by iconic London buses

St James's park

London somehow didn't change much since the last time we were there. Maybe tube is a bit more crowded and among foreign languages that one hears on the streets there are more East-European ones, but the atmosphere is mostly the same. I'm already planning which places I want to visit the next time I come...

Another attempt at sailing weekend

May 1st is national holiday and it's a good time to plan for longer weekend or shorter holiday. Especially if the weather is nice. This year it wasn't. The forecast was promising everything - from sun, rain, wind from 0 to 40 knots to a wide array of temperatures. We still decided to drive to Krk and make the most of it. After all, captain and me worked hard all last Aprils weekend to rebuild the stairs, clean the anchor winch motor and repair the toilet and it was time to test-drive everything.

We left Zabnica on Thursday morning, but we didn't drive to Krk directly, first we stopped in Piran, where there was Faberge exhibition in a beautiful Venetian villa.

I was lucky to see some of the imperial eggs on exhibition in Dubrovnik several years ago and although the artefacts here were not imperial I was still amazed of all the details and beautiful enamel.

This one is for the captain...

... and this one for me (because of the frog - in translation the name of our village would be Froggville)

When we were walking through the pretty Piran the weather was still nice (Faberge exhibition was in the red house).

When we reached Krk, we decided to go into the cave called Biserujka (aka Pearl cave - people believe there are some pirate treasure hidden there). The weather got worse, so being under ground was even more pleasant than above.

Next day we took Heron out of the bay.

We only sailed a couple of miles to the next bay, weather got worse again so we stayed mostly inside the boat. I went rowing for a while and it was really nice, can't wait to do it again in nice weather. We returned to the bay in the evening and even saw couple of dolphins on the way.

Next day we drove around the island with car and ended in a beautiful town of Vrbnik, with tiny streets of stone houses, small doors, green porches and balconies...

The day ended with a delicious meal in one of Vrbnik restaurant, with a bottle of local wine Blatina, of course.

On Sunday we thoroughly cleaned the boat and drove home on early afternoon. And so it was again not a sailing holiday. I'm refusing to return to the boat until I have a warranty of a nice weather and some wind! There were enough weekends full of boat projects and rainy and cold days spent inside the boat.

First sailing weekend of the season

Last weekend we spent two days on Heron. It was supposed to be "sailing weekend", but due to the weather and many boat projects that were waiting to be done, it turned out to be "working weekend". Although we did sail a couple of miles.

Soon after we arrived to Klimno on Saturday and boarded Heron it started to rain. We did some smaller things around the boat and although we were working it was really cold and damp. Luckily the rain stopped in early evening and we decided to sail off immediately, but only a couple of miles away to next good anchorage.

We sailed out of the bay to the East, towards Velebit hills.

Although the rain stopped, it was still very cloudy. As always, I was fascinated by the clouds.

After a bit more than an hour we reached the bay of Petrina, where we anchored.

Evening was damp and cold and soon after dinner we snuggled up in our warm sleeping bags and went to sleep. Morning brought a few rays of sun and the bay looked even prettier than the evening before.

The water was crystal clear and all the time Heron was right above the anchor (in the middle of photo, on the right is shadow of me taking the photo).

First bigger project was to disassemble the stairs and reinforce them. We removed the bottom three steps that can be lifted to get to the engine, and the top one, that is fixed. We didn't need to remove the insulation, a while ago it fell down by itself, the weird pattern are the remains of the glue.

Of course we had to invent the way to climb up to the cockpit and then back down into the boat. This was the first solution...

... and this the second, improved, one. It took a bit of gymnastics to use it.

A little after noon we sailed back to Heron's buoy. Well, we did sail for a while, but most of the time the engine was also on.

Once back on the buoy we tackled the second bigger project - to find out why the anchor winch is not working every now and then.

After disassembling the motor and doing some of the work on the toilet we drove home. Now we'll have to do a lot more work before we can go sailing again. We need to reinforce the stairs and assemble everything together (insulation is already glued back on), clean the anchor winch motor and reinforce the toilet with bigger screws or bigger washers.

Easter holiday we spent with our families and next weekend we're back on Heron again.