On the second day of our Rhine River cruise, we visited beautiful Colmar in France’s Alsace region. The city is full of centuries-old half-timbered buildings lining winding cobblestone lanes. And when we were there, the Christmas markets were in full swing with holiday decorations everywhere. Colmar also is notable for being the hometown of Frederic-Auguste…
Tag Archives | Nordhavn
Samsung QN55Q70RA
When we ordered Dirona back in 2009, we replaced the standard port-side settee with a custom TV lift sized to handle a 46-inch flat-screen. And during commissioning in Seattle, we installed a Samsung LN46B750 46-inch TV, which was reasonably state-of-the-art at the time. While we’ve had some troubles with the TV lift, the Samsung TV…
Basel, Switzerland
In late December we flew to Basel, Switzerland to embark on a week-long Rhine River cruise back to Amsterdam. Lying just south of the Rhine River border between France and Germany, Basel is the second-largest economic center in the country and the third-highest in population. We arrived mid-morning for a 10pm ship departure and spent…
2019 Summary
For us, 2019 was the “Year of the Canal”. We spent much of the year cruising the Baltic Sea, and passed through an incredible 98 locks while transiting several major and minor canal systems, including the Kiel Canal across Germany, the Saimaa Canal through Russia to Finland’s Great Lake Saimaa system, and the Gota and…
Return to US
Following METS, we spent a relatively quiet week in Amsterdam, completing a few boat projects and hosting some visitors. In early December, we returned to the US for a couple of weeks where James spent a week at the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas and a couple of days at the AWS data centers…
Merry Christmas – Happy Holidays
Nordhavn 57-26 Istaboa
[Kensblog] Construction Update and more
Greetings all! All is going fine with the construction of our new boat. Surprises can still happen, but we’re on track to take delivery of the boat sometime before this coming summer. Our cruising plans We now know our cruising plans! Or, at least w…
Spitfire Arraow the World
When we first started planning our boat trip around the world, we expected that cruising internationally with our cat Spitfire would limit the countries we could visit, because we did not want to subject him to lengthy quarantines. In reality, the French territory of New Caledonia was the only destination that we opted not to…
NEW BOAT NOW IN OUR LIVES
The purchase of our new boat has now been finalised and we take over ownership in the next few days.While Envoy, as a full displacement vessel, was perfect for the Med, we never intended to buy such a vessel here. Instead we have been looking at planin…
Fuel Cooling
On arriving into Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas Islands in 2013, the fuel temperature in our supply tank had climbed to 180F (82C). What was happening is the engine circulates about 50 gallons per hour and yet only burns a tiny fraction of that. Most of this fuel flows through the engine fuel system and…
