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Easter Sunday – the weekend that everyone rushes to get their boats off the hard and into the water – although this year it seems to have been delayed because of the horrid weather. We are waiting for the hard to empty so that we can get Debanessa out of the water and get her undersides cleaned up and anti-fouled – but Shamrock at least is still very congested.

The kids did so well in their Day Skipper theory course, that, by the second day the instructor had shifted them up to the Yachtmaster Coastal Skipper course – which they both passed with flying colours. Tarryn got 98.5% on he IRPCS, and they both did very well on their passage planning, meteorology and tides and EP’s and stuff. Tarryn’s plan is to get her Yachtmaster by the time she is 16 (she needs to wait until after 16 because she can’t get her VHF license until then). Nicky is content with just beating Ellen MacArthur’s record of getting her Yachtmaster at 18.

While we are on the subject of clever girls, the kids got above 90% on their Music Theory exams and Maggie went one better with 100%. Maggie and I have out Celestial Navigation course at the end of May – high standards to try and keep to.

We spent Friday on Debanessa cleaning, and getting all the little jobs done (like measuring and marking the anchor chain). So at least topsides she is all shipshape. Maggie has been doing some serious planning work for our August round England trip, and we are slowly accumulating the necessary charts and pilots for the trip – which is a fairly major expense (charts are pretty darn expensive or bits of paper).

Talking of major expenses, the red BMW is back from Scotthall after its most recent MOT and major service. The noise which I have been asking them to sort out for the last year and a half (and which they have been fobbing me off for a year and a half) turned out to the a suspension bush and also bad wear on the rear suspension mountings which has now been fixed after a £1250 donation to the BMW coffers. It was a close thing for her – the decision was almost to have her scrapped, and I think next year she will be.

The Laser has at last been sold, so the Z3 has a garage to live in at last. And the next door’s cat no longer has a nice cloth rooftop to lie on and to shed her fur on – shame.

The sailing trips are stacking up. I have a nine day sail on the 30th April out of San Francisco, and then two yacht deliveries, one from Hamburg to St. Malo in France (a six day sail), and one from St. Malo to Portsmouth a few days later. The deliveries are in June, and will all be useful mile gobblers to that I can accumulate enough miles to get my Yachtmasters this year.

The web site has taken a bit of a knock with PhotoPoint deciding that it is in my best interest to end their free unlimited storage way of doing business and to start charging me per 1000 photos. I have decided that it is in my best interest not to pay them any money, so I have a bit of work to do to move all my photos to another site. So if you notice that the photos are no longer available from TheChalmers.com you will know why.

I have been very active with game playing over the last few weeks. Cossacks has been sucking the time, and I have also restarted Diablo 2 online – and have dragged my Paladin to level 34 with much pain and shedding of monster blood. 9 Million Experience points and only another 600,000 until I reach level 35.

I have installed Office 10 (or Office XP – experience – as Microsoft calls it). Seems fine if a bit paranoid about macro viruses – turns off all the macros so you can’t really use it until you turn them all back on. Also a pain that they seem to have dropped sharing of Outlook contacts – without even a mention of it in the help anymore. This is a pity since I used that facility quite effectively to keep out contact list shared and up to date. One step forwards and two back I think.

Enjoy the rest of the Easter break everyone – keep having fun, life is not a dress rehearsal…

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