Well, I did promise an update to the blog and I hear you all say, “so where is it?” Where to start? well my last blog entry I was in Holland. Almost at the end of the dry-dock activities we had a crew change and I returned to Colorado, for what would turn out to be almost five weeks leave. We even go in an unprecedented four visits to the movies! We had a lot going on there with a few jobs getting done, some animals going, some coming and some being transfered to a friends pasture for a while. Getting the pasture secured for the goats and llamas was one of the first and most important jobs. Having said that, one of the smaller goats did manage to get out at one point resulting in our friends neighbor having to ask “is this your goat?” Perhaps luckily it was one of the friendly goats that likes people, so getting him back into the pasture wasn’t a problem. We also had our first go a shearing the llamas, with mixed results. The one that we thought would be less of a problem was rather fidgety, and the one that we thought would be nervous was okay (at least was, after I left Dazzle to do it as I appeared to make the llama nervous) In amongst the ranch work, we did manage to take a break and have a weekend up in Breckenridge. The trip was primarily to see a house built the same way as we are planning to build ours, and it was very helpful, with the gentleman providing us with a great deal of information and advice. He also had a look at our ideas for our own house and thought that they were very practical with only a couple of minor tweaks. While in Breckenridge, Dazzle was also delighted to find an Indian restaurant that was only a few miles away! Then it was back to work unfortunately. While I was on leave, the ship made the transit to Angola. So my journey was a long and tortuous one. Colorado Springs to Houston, overnight flight to Paris, lonnnggg wait in Paris before going on to Lisbon, then another overnight flight to Luanda. 43 hours in all, with 18 of them just waiting at the various airports. After arriving in Angola (minus my bag of course, which was still in Paris) we were collected and taken to the company compound. Picture Stalag Luft III on the outside, and a half decent motel on the inside! Anyway, the rooms were comfortable, clean with individual en-suites and the center of the compound had a swimming pool… though my swimming trunks were of course still in Paris. We were then picked up from the compound the following morning and take to the port to join the ship.. which hadn’t at that time cleared customs and immigration, so we had to wait for 3 hours before we finally go on board. The project has been going slowly as we have had a number of problems. The main ones being with the ships 150Ton crane which was overhauled by the manufacturer while we were in dry-dock! I think thats enough for just now, I will endeavour to add more before too long!
