Although Austin says I never shut up, I’m not really in the habit of writing "after-words", but I did promise to post a few more photos from this year's trip.

We are now back in Australia where La Niña keeps on coming, drowning towns, farmland and areas that are normally drought-stricken. 

Before leaving the continent we had another short visit with my brother, followed by a trip to Friesland to collect the residual boxes from the boatyard and drop off useful tools and boat parts to the new owners of the former Freshwater.

I say “former Freshwater" because our old boat had yet another name change. The new young owner, who claims that he and his partner have no prior boating experience, christened her “Fingers Crossed". We love the name and think, it remains appropriate even for old sea dogs!

Back in Schweich, suitcases packed and Lodi readied for winter storage, we took the regional train to Koblenz. In Koblenz, we would have 10 minutes to change trains to Frankfurt Airport for our flight back to Oz. A smooth trip really, except that four stations on the slow, regional train stopped for a very long time. Nobody knew what was happening until finally an announcement was made: “All passengers please leave the train! The train stops here.” We were then told that there was a fire at the next station and all trains were on hold. When 30 minutes later, the train driver and conductor left the platform bags in hand we got really worried if we could make our flight in time. It took another 30 minutes of confusion, discarding ideas of sharing a very expensive taxi until we were told that another train was on its way.

To cut a long story short, we did manage to change tickets in Koblenz for the next Frankfurt Airport train and although we were the last to check in to our flight, there was still time before boarding to have a 30-second shower in the Emirates Lounge! 

In Sydney the jet lag got us, yet, after we felt “normal” again, it didn’t take us long to make plans for next year’s boating in Europe.

But before we share our new plans, here are some of our (well mostly Austin’s) photos: