C’est la Vie with her replaced canopy

We leave for Ireland next weekend, so we are clearing and doing final touch ups on the boat. The going away parties have started! This week we have been to dinner to Alain and Francoise’s home. On Sunday we are taking a number of people out for a last farewell trip on the boat.

It is hard to believe that it is almost a year since our Gap Adventure started. At the end of next week we leave for Ireland, via Portsmouth England for a short visit to Neil and Bernie.

l/r John Marc, Adrian, Marie, Francoise, Nuala, Alain

We have made many friends in Chalon and have been wined and dined by them.  Alain and Francoise treated us to another great night of French hospitality. For starters we had Avocado Noix St Jacques, main course Zander fish (caught by Alain himself in the Saone River) with rice, then cheese board and for desert, homemade chocolate mousse and a Burgundy variation of Choux pastry cakes.

Of course ,we had fine selection of wines to go with the dinner and two bottles of Crémant du Bourgogne for aperitifs. Maybe it’s just as well we are going home so we can lose some weight!

So we have spent this week going through all the cupboards and boxes on the boat. It’s been very hard deciding what to sell with the boat, what to send for recycling or take home! People, who know us well, know we are hoarders and bring far too much “stuff” with us everywhere we go. But Nuala’s small car is the limit of what we can take home so we have to be ruthless.

Painting the deck storage boxes

The final work has been done on the boat. We have changed the canopy cover, painted the deck storage boxes and washed and scrubbed it. Today it’s time to dewinterise the engine, check it and all the navigational equipment to make sure all is working correctly, as the boat has not moved for over four months. I don’t want any problems when we have visitors on board on Sunday!

So next week is our final week in Chalon sur Saone and then it’s off to our next adventure- going home to Dublin and getting back into the swing of things!