News About The Greer Family

December 10, 2001: Still Cruising In France

Dragonsinger In Cassis (photo Allen Greer)

This update sees us in Port Vendres, France, near the border between France and Spain. We made our way here via our longest passage so far -- a seventeen hour overnight passage from Port St. Louis du Rhone. We are currently waiting for paperwork from French customs that shows that they are happy with Dragonsinger and all that all taxes have been paid. We may never need this paperwork, but without it we could be asked to pay VAT on the boat in some other European country. It's just not worth the risk to leave without the relevant papers, so we wait here for the French postal system to deliver. Once we have the papers, we plan to make our way south towards Barcelona as fast as the weather lets us.

November has been a bit of an exasperating time as we have waited for many boat projects to be completed. Delays in getting parts from both Jeanneau and from the United States kept us in Port St. Louis longer than we had hoped. And the final leaks in the bow required patience by both Yacht Services and us, as they were sealed off one-by-one. It has been more than ten years since we commissioned a new boat and we had forgotten how complex they are. The extra time has had its benefits as we got to see more of Provence and slowly start climbing the learning curve of all of the boat systems on Dragonsinger.

Allen using the disposable Fuji camera that he got for his birthday took the picture above. Cassis is one of many places that we have visited in the last month. We have also seen Arles, Avignon, Pont du Gard, and Les Baux, along with Port St. Louis. We have also experienced the famous Mistral wind, which is just as fierce as we had been warned it would be. To cap things off, Karalee celebrated her birthday on December 4th. You can read about all the things we have been up to in David's diary.

Itinerary

Our itinerary is waiting on external events such as the French Postal Service and the weather. But right now, this is what we expect things to look like for the next month or so:

Dec. 12 - Dec. 15:	Costa Brava (Mediterranean coast from Port Vendres to Barcelona)
Dec. 15 - Jan. 15:	Barcelona