Catch-up!

It's been a busy four months since our last post in August.

At that time we were heading from Brazil up to Tobago. We spent a delightful 10 days in Man of War Bay in Tobago before moving down to Powerboats at Chaguaramas in Trinidad where we hauled out for the damage sustained in Tuzi Gazi in 2015 to be repaired.

After another few days we left Sea Bunny in the care of the yard and various contractors while we flew back to the UK for our second visit of the year.

One of the activities while in the UK was to start house-hunting for a base when we finally return there - which will, hopefully, be in 2017. We had been searching online in an area roughly from Exeter in the west north-east to Hereford and eastwards to East Kent, with a separate area around York. After looking at a couple of new builds around Exeter we concluded that this was further west than we really wanted to be.

Josh and Jake at Portland

Fortunately our son Nik and wife Lou had just bought a second home in Poole on the south coast and we were able to base ourselves there while looking in central southern England. This enabled us to meet up with the New Forest branch of the family.

Suffice it to say that we visited an estate agent in the Dorset town of Shaftesbury (home of the Hovis bread advert featuring a very steep cobbled street see here). They claimed to have "the very house for you" on their books. About 6 weeks later, having delayed our return to Trinidad, we own it!

Light show at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Edinburgh

While the machinations of the process of buying a house in England ground on we made our second trip of the year to Scotland.

Our new house

We had about 10 days in the house between completion of the purchase and flying out - arranging contractors for some urgent work, purchasing all sorts of domestic items (e.g beds!) and sorting some of the more urgent areas of the garden that will have grown rampantly by our return in June 2017.

Very friendly neighbours are keeping an eye on the house and it is only an hour or so from James and Jane in Bransgore and from Nik and Lou's Poole house.

Returning to Sea Bunny in Trinidad on 2 December we moved into a different type of work mode, getting the boat ready for the move up the Caribbean and hopefully the Atlantic crossing in May/June..

We are now back in the water, but still in Powerboats..