Land Ahoy!

We're back on land!!!!

So this was a rather momentous sailing trip for me

in that in the week it took to do it i didnt vomit once.

This is mainly because of the awesome spanish

sea sick pills that i took which pretty much knocked me out and put me to sleep for the whole journey.

Don't judge my addictions....

We've landed in Majorca

and have spent the weekend just wandering the streets getting a feel for

our new city.

being in a city again is kind of different after

basically living in a Marina with one street of restaurants

and two hotels for the last couple of months.

Tonight we had five guest just drop into

the boat to say hello.

Its kind of nice not to just see the same people every day...

all day

Civilisation.

Although to be fair,

with my husband around i could do without it...

civilisation.

Give me a cabin in the woods

or a boat on the ocean...

but give me my husband to go with it and i'll

do just fine. 

Setting Sail....

 

 

 

So we are setting sail again tomorrow.

 

It's been a while since we have actually done any sailing....

thank goodness,

i really havent taken to it naturally.

 

In fact husband has just been sent out to the pharmacy to

get travel sick medication.

he asked 'what kind do i want'

My reply was,

'no namby pamby herbal crap,

real stuff that is going to knock me out'.

 

There were exotic plans about crossing over the Atlantic

to the caribean

but beacuse of work that needs done on the boat

and the owner of the boat not being able to make it out any time soon.

We are heading across to Majorca.

Where we will be grounded for a little while

whilst the boat is upgraded.

 

That means an apartment and evverything....

 

Wooohoo!

 

Now if only i survive the journry.

 

Boat Life....Cranky....

The hardest part about boat life for me is,

well being on the boat...ALL THE TIME

(apart from sailing...

which i guess is the hardest part about sailing)

Living where you work can suck...

equally worse,

living with your colleagues sucks even more.

Getting 'me time'

or even

'us time'

is far and few inbetween.

Everything is a communal decision.

Every conversation is overheard.

All your private moments are public moments.

Everything is in your face all the time!

There are two couples on the boat,

myself and Tim 

and another married couple.
in a rather confined space
(well a 72ft yacht)

This week the other girl and i have
been butting heads...
mainly in the kitchen.
the saying 'too many cooks spoils the broth'
could never be more true.

In the normal world, if your colleague
annoys you , you go home, complain a bit,
unwind, relax, stop thinking about it for a while
and gear yourself up for the next day.
All i can do here is move a metre away and keep on simmering away...
or occasionally boil over.

It works with spouses too,
at one point Tim and i were butting heads,
being with each other 24/7 can have its toll on you.,
(i think he prefers that i'm butting heads with
co-workers rather than him now!)

Dont get me wrong i have a good life.
A very good life.
i currently have also have a very easy life....
but sometimes it would be nice if that life were my life,
not everybody else's too.

I'm going to put it down to a good learning curve.
i've never been a good sharer and now i'm practically a communist.

On the other hand,
i'm off to London for the weekend.
Leaving my husband behind....
this will be the first time we have spent any time apart since we were married.

I mean that quite literally,
the most time we have spent apart from each other
was when i spent the night in the hospital,
i think it was less than 12 hours....

i think i'll miss him!

Boaty boaty...

This is a sweet video that

one of the crew on the boat made of our last little trips.

Check it out!!!!!

It's not so much where you're going, but more how you get there. from Grant Borthwick on Vimeo.

Boaty Blog.....

If any one has any remote interest the boat that i'm

sailing on has a boaty blog.

Lots of boat talk on it...

but also some pretty pictures and

occasional more up to date info than i've

been managing to give lately 

http://www.sailblogs.com/member/moksha/?xjMsgID=250122

i'm also on instagram

(i think user name rgiboin)

i take some pics there when i'm travelling around.

i leave tim to carry the camer 

Tripping....

Slovenia was awesome!

it was like being in wonderland with all our favourite friends.

We got all fattened up,

eating at our favourite restaurants and

being cooked amazing meals by friends.

Its nice to be in a place where we 

know if we go in a restaurant its gonna be good food, 

because we've done all the tried and testing in advabce.

travelling around a lot its something you notice,

restaurants are hit and miss,

sometimes its nice to have a place you can go to 

and every thing is gonna be good.

In fact the whole trip was a bit like that....

i definitely feel like Ljubljana is my home away from home

And now....

we are in Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands.

Sailing here was not the best of pleasures for me.

i got sick again on the first today,

and although i drugged up on sea sick meds after that and felt physically fine

I spent my birthday bobbing around on the ocean and for me

that was not fun at all....

booooo....

my poor husband doesnt quite get my 

dislike for the bobbing...but he tries.

Floating.....

 Dang!

Its pretty hard to keep up a blog when your floating on a boat with limited internet connection.

We've gone from the uk to spain and am currently in portugal

heading to the Canary Islands soon.

Here are some of my thoughts on sailing  and my current life in general- 

i do not like the motion of the ocean...

all the up and down, too and fro, side to side makes my head spin 

and my tummy churn.

I do not have sea legs...

they are definitely land lovers legs that like a firm foundation.

Cooking on a bumpy boat is tricky...

it can end up in pumpkin soup being spilled down the walls.

Pumpkin soup can look like vomit...

and make you want to wretch...

to create your very own pumpkin soup creation.

sailing in the wind, hail, lightening, rain and fog is not fun.

i can tell you this from experience.

In the last week (or two, i loose track of the days)

i have sailed on the Irish Sea,

the bay of biscay

and the atlantic ocean.

You can see awesome stars at night when on night watch

in the middle of the ocean.

Going to new locations is fun,

The arriving part is more fun than the travelling part

in my opinion.

i'd rather take a plane.

one of my first things to do when arriving in a new location

is to find my local church,

find my local adult ballet class

find my local swimming pool

most of these are pretty hard to find.

i'm feeling fairly unfit.

It is AWESOME spending every hour of everyday with my husband.

i was a bit apprehensive before i came on the boat

seeing as the last  2 years of our relationship were long distance,

but the more time i spend with him the more 

i enjoy it.

we've barely spent more than an hour or two apart since we've been married.

thats pretty weird right!

but great!!!!!!!

the irish sea

Today we crossed the Irish Sea again

and i didnt vomit...

this is progress.

We also spent half our trip with some dolphins racing against our boat.

They came so close i felt like a mermaid.

A break from Wedding Posts....

So your probably sick of wedding posts...

and i'm going to be really slow at writing them...

and in the meantime i have been doing loads of new and 

exciting things as part of my new life as Mrs. Reid!

Things like sailing across to Northern Ireland.

My first time.

We anchored just off a little town called Killyleagh.

When Tim and I finally made it to land it turned out 

our fancy big boat was quite the talk of the village!

We have let them come to the conclusion that we owned the boat

rather than just crewing it....

But it also turned out that we had arrived just in time for the big event of the year in the village...

The Grand Chocolate Ball!

Oh yes a Chocolate themed Ball...

oh and did i mention it was in a castle?

well it was....in a castle....

in this castle!

isnt it the most Princessy castle you have ever seen!

And my lovely husband bought us tickets

(after pretending to own the boat)

The locals were fantastic and we had a great time...

in fact we were the star guests of the ball...

we got our own introduction!

There wasnt as much chocolate as i would have liked,

and it was more eating than dancing...

but i managed to sneak in a couple of slow dances with my hubby,

it was so romantic!

We also went on a trip to Belfast.

(i have lots of pictures of all these things but i havent

downloaded them yet and i have to grab internet whilst i can0

My favourite thing was the Crown bar that we went to.

Its an old whorehouse that is now a respectable pub/restaurant.

The architecture was beautiful and we sat in our own little 

closed off booth to have our food.

The food was gggoooooodddd!

we also went on a Black Cab Tour of political Belfast.

Basically a taxi driver takes you to the Protestant and Catholic areas of the city,

there are lots of murals around depicting the tensions.

Also i never realised that the tensions there were still so high.

It was a definite eye opener,

especially to see the large gates that are closed every night between the 

Protestant and Catholic areas of the city.

It was very reminiscent of  Old Berlin....

Today we are in Wales....

but i'll get to that another day.

A pirates life for me....

i'm not totally missing in action.

i just spent the last few days on my first sailing trip,

 from the south coast of england to the north of scotland.

Highlights-

seeing a cool pirate style ship

seeing dolphins

Lowlights -

getting totally sea sick on the second day and puking up a lot

meanwhile my wedding is in two and a half weeks 

and sometimes the thought of that just reminds me of the things that i dont quite have under control yet .

turns out when it comes to the wedding i've turned into a 

SUPER-Control Freak!

No wedding shoes

no dj

flowers not fully organised

musicians not fully confirmed

people wanting to bring extra plus ones (asking 2 weeks in advance is not cool)

a bridesmaid dress down, and i'm seriously doubting it will even fit when it arrives

On the uber up side....

my wedding dress is finally coming toogether.

My big sister has worked wonders after a heck of a lot of tears on my side.

The last time i tried it on before i left it had finally turned into what i had originally planned....

phew...

it only took 4 dressmakers

a million fittings

buying the material twice

carting it across continents and countries

Life goes on......

It's kind of strange to think that this life on the boat is my future for the time being.

It feels like i'm a little bit on holiday mode and at the end of 6weeks i'll be flying back to where ever

to go back to my normal life of spinning around in the studio.

Yesterday Captain Tim took me out shopping to buy all my Sailor Outfits....

not quite the cure little dresses i had in mind.

More like anoraks and fleeces and lots of thermal underwear....

hmmm....and here was me thinking i'd just be lazing around in a bikini.

I'm also working hard on learning my knots....

i kid you (k)not.

Its so cliche, sitting around learning my reef knots,

bowlines and figures of eights.

Hmmmm.....life is strange.

The Beach!!!!!

I left london just as the same started 

coming out after spending a week there in the rain.

I'm now down in Dorset 

with my lovely fiancee

learning knots and my way around the boat.

That doesnt meant i didnt have time to make a quick visit to

Bournemouth pier and beach.

Tim wasnt keen on me asking the life guard for a picture with him

so i managed to persuade him to get one with him walking in the background.

and then it was back to the boat....

Post-Wedding....

My fiancee just emailed me our post-wedding plans...

its looking a bit like this -

September - Beginning of October-

Get married, have a mini-moon.....

sail from Scotland to England

October to beginning of November

Sail from England to Morocco

November

Sail down the coast of Morocco 

December, January 2013, February

Winter the boat in Morocco or Lanzarote 

Later Feb

Meet up with the owner in Dakar

March, April

Sail Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau

May

Cross Atlantic to Brazil 

Hmmmmm.....

thats quite a big change from Swan Lake and Nutcracker rehearsals.....

Although Tim tells me that these are only guidelines as his Boss's
 destinations normally end up changing every time the wind does.