Heading back to Blue Velvet

When we arrived home in September 2016, after having left BV on the hard at a boatyard in Koiládhia (Argolic Gulf, Greece), we had all sorts of intentions of being very organized over the winter. I envisaged myself sitting by the log fire, sipping a small dram and finishing the last few blog entires for 2016. With so much time at home, surely ordering spares for BV and making up a few small bits and pieces for her would be a doddle. Well it should have been, however, we got distracted!

Our main winter task was actually some fairly extensive house renovations. If this year goes as planned then we’ll put a fair few miles under our keel and so we needed the house in a good state so that it could be lived in whilst we are away. That’s our excuse, anyway. The reality is that we focussed on what we needed to do for BV far too late. A case in point was a new spare exhaust elbow. That turned out to be a bespoke build with a 4 week lead time. We did order it with barely 4 weeks to go to our departure but it was actually not ready in time. So, here we are heading back out to Greece with the house as we wanted it but without everything that we had hoped to bring out to BV.

A chocolate leaving present we saved for eating on board BV

The final stages before heading back to BV are always busy but part of that was a handful of very pleasant parties and social events to say goodbye to friends. Particularly important this time because we are planning on spending very little of the year in our house. BV will be our home for most of the year and we are both very excited about how the next chapter in our sailing adventure actually turns out.