While preparing to leave we have been saying ‘see you soon’ or farewell to our friends and family. While it feels daunting in some way that we will be departing for a big long adventure of 3 years, in the short term we are only hopping over to La France for a few months and will easily be able to keep in touch with our special people and pooches.

We look forward to seeing you all very soon. For those that we did not get chance to see we hope to see you soon, follow our dot on AIS, plan a weekend and meet up with us, you are all very welcome.

And not to forget Jenny and Jamie at Gosport marina reception, shiney Matt at endeavour quay, Chay, Craig and Matty (Desty), Simon and team (A1 electrical services), Ross and his (Jerry the Rigging) team, Tony (sticker man), Stuart (fridge man), Lee (dinghy man), Mark (steel man), Rob (kitchen man), and Julie, Martin and Lyn (the amazing fabric experts at Comfort Afloat), and Dieter (at Ocean Trax)! You have all made a big contribution to our refurbishment and comfort over the past six months, thank you!

Looking forward, we hope to meet up with our extended family and distant overseas friends that we haven’t seen for ages! And continue to make new friends as we venture forth.

Or here we come La France!! With the wonderful support from Judy at ‘the CA’ (the cruising association) we have successfully received our six month visas to visit France. The process was straight forward with the right upfront preparation, but knowing what papers and copies to take to the consulate service in advance is very important. Judy’s expert advice was invaluable, thank you!

Our time in France is a critical part of the plan to head south to join the ARC in September. Maximising our days in the Schengen area by allowing us to use the 90 days in Spain and Portugal and allow us a casual cruise along the Atlantic French coastline for 4-5 months after we depart the UK after Easter.

We completed our online pre-application from home and booked our consulate interview (2 week lead time) and visited Wandsworth to be pleasantly updated via email on the visa progress and within 1 week 1 day the courier service delivered our passports complete with French visa! The forms and process isn’t designed for yacht travel but can be adapted. We (I) were super nervous about the possibility of rejection and the consequences of a more complicated schengen limited journey to the canaries, but alas, when we opened the passport envelopes to find our visas we ‘high fived’ and did a little dance!

Alors, on y go. All set for departure. A few more jobs to do and then we’re off. Only 14 days left of this what has been a five year lead up! Today however reminds us of how the weather now impacts every aspect of our lives, with gusts of 56kts and 7m waves in the channel we are reminded that a catamaran shouldn’t be this far north and that we need to wait for NE to NW winds for our safe short 60nm trip to Cherbourg!