Projects on a boat don’t seem to find endings … unless you just stop! Which we didn’t until we decided to have a break to visit Jana in Paris. 🙂 That’s why there’s nothing really interesting to write about. I did some sewing, a cover for the outboard engine and for the navigation panel in the cockpit and I started to work on my bread baking skills again. Oh and I started to can and pickle food to get to know how to do it. As we would like to have healthy food when we’re in areas where we can’t buy fresh food. Meanwhile Norbert figured out which watermaker (Aquatec 550D – 60l/h), solar panels (2 x 100W) and antennas (HAM, WLAN, cellular)  we need and he ordered these including tools and material.

The time passes so incredibly quickly that suddenly it was Monday the 19th of November and we found ourselfes excitedly sitting in the TGV train on our way to see Jana and Benoit. Yippeeeeeeee. We had some great days! Spoilt with a nice meal on our first evening and a lot of catching up we enjoyed the next day strolling around Galerie La Fayette and Printemps (bad weather). We spend hours there just watching the christmas decoration and the beautiful old buildings and of course the unbelievable expensive things .

One could buy a watch which is worth more than our boat!!! Who buys such items? And who needs it?  I probalbly won’t find out… Dinner was served in a nice italian restaurant just around the corner of Jana’s and Benoit’s appartement as we were pretty exhausted to walk much further, or to prepare a meal ourselfes. The following day Jana showed us some nice streets in ” Le Marais” which were new to us. We had a lot of fun strolling, watching people and buildings and just having Jana around. :-). As a new apple store just opened on Champs Elysees in a very old building we decided to give it a go and have a look at it. It was indeed impressive and didn’t look like a shop at all – but in the end it was just an apple store. 🙂  It is always good to keep in touch with friends and as we have some in Paris we forced them to invite us 🙂 and so we got treated with a lovely evening and a nice dinner. Big thanks to Pieter and Anelle, it was a great evening! Next dinner is on us! Unfortunately our last day had arrived and we had to say goodbye, but not for long as christmas is coming soon and we all meet again.

Back in La Rochelle the water maker arrived so we, (means in fact Norbert), installed it, which took him roughly a week. The biggest problem was to find a space to place all the parts of the water maker without using premium space of the boat. The pump, the pipe, the filters, the panels and of course the hose. He laid like 30 meters of hose, he says it felt like 50 meters. 🙂 As “el capitano” is always looking after me even while working, he didn’t want me to get bored and also want me to stay in shape ;-). So he send me twice a day to chanteliers to buy e.g. pipe clamps or missing hose or junctions or whatever was missing. (By the end of the week I only needed 8 min to get to the shop with the bike instead of 10 minutes at the beginning 🙂 ) and I have become the new friend of the guys working in the store. Finally the solar panels were installed as well. Yeah! We asked a company to build the aluminium mounting frames for the panels and install them on our arch as it is a bit tricky with the aluminium (welding).

And it goes on. Until we head back to German for x-mas, the HAM antenna needs to get installed, basically a big piece of the backstay gets insulated, the WLAN/cellular communication has to be installed and the battery bank upgrade which comes with some new cabling requires time. The watermaker will be tested shortly before we leave in March, as after the first usage a weekly/bi-weekly usage is required.

A lot of stuff but no beaches, no sun sets, no dolphins … YET. Stay tuned!