It is actually January 21st as I write this but since it is still a retrospective I am using the same date.

We had just finished our visit with Kyle in our previous post. We then headed to Minnesota to see multiple friends and family members. We flew to MN on December 23rd. Here is a picture of the sunrise from my seat on the plane:

And just like that (finger snap!) we were in a beautiful snow covered country!

We were in MN from Dec. 23 – Jan. 7. During that time, we (or I) attended one to three social events every day. It was wonderful to see so many people! Actually, we had to cancel three social engagements and hunker down for two days due to snow. Our granddaughter, Brooke, helped Michael and me shovel about eight inches of heavy wet snow on two occasions. It was actually fun to shovel and it is good exercise, but I am going to say that I got enough of it in that short time. I am especially happy to not drive in the stuff.

Sadly, and very unusual for us, we took too few pictures during this time. I don’t know what we were thinking. Well, we weren’t thinking. That was the problem. Suffice it to say that all of our friends are extremely good looking. 🙂 Oh, and smart and funny. . . and creative. That should do it.

We then went to Colorado for a few days to see my sister and my 101-year-old mom. You read that right: 101. She has pretty much lost her short-term memory but she still walks up and down stairs and tries to help around the house. Simply amazing!

We first flew back to Orlando. If that seems weird, it is because it was cheaper to book a round trip from Cyprus to Orlando and back and then book one-way flights to MN and CO and back to FL than to fly one-way everywhere. Here are a few pictures from our flight to FL:

Our remaining return flights to Cyprus had short layover times. We were a bit concerned, but it would be okay as long as the flights weren’t delayed. (And it was possibly better than having a 13.5 hour layover, such as we did on the flight out.) The weather looked good, so there appeared to be no cause for worry.

Then the weirdest thing happened for the very first time in the U.S. on the exact day (Wednesday, January 11th) we were scheduled to begin our three-part flight to Cyprus. (I am wondering again if I am a jinx.) The FAA’s system that sends timely safety alerts to pilots broke. The outage halted takeoffs for about 90 minutes that morning. Flights began to resume around 9:00 a.m. but the effects continued to snarl air traffic throughout the day.

Our first flight was delayed by two hours. That meant we would certainly miss our second flight unless it too was delayed. It wasn’t. So, we put our names on standby for a 9:55 p.m. flight. The gentleman at the gate initially told us that the flight was completely full so we didn’t get our hopes up. I checked the status of the flight online and it confirmed that every section was full. Michael went back to the gate agent about 20 minutes later and this time he said he thought we would be okay. (I am guessing that it was either due to the routine “no show” or other passengers had been delayed and were missing this flight and had not checked in.) In any event, not only did we make the flight, we were seated across the aisle from each other! This was for the long flight across the pond, so it was kind of nice to have a partner nearby to chat with from time to time.

We arrived in Frankfurt about one hour after the flight to Cyprus left. This was no surprise to us; we knew we would miss it. The woman at the Lufthansa Services counter was very helpful and tried to do what she could to help us. . . and not charge us for a new flight. She did it! We booked a flight to Munich for later that afternoon (giving it about two hours to allow our luggage to catch up – we had confirmed that it had made it to Frankfurt) and to Cyprus the next day.

The airport might have been in Munich, but our hotel was in Freising, Bavaria, Germany. We weren’t paying attention to the location when we booked it or we would have booked it in Munich. But, it was a quaint little town so we were quite glad to be there. We will definitely go back to Germany to visit Munich, however.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about Freising:

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Hello again! Parts 1 and 2 of this post included our trip to Universal Studios, the Escape Room, and the Kennedy Space Center. Today’s post is about our visit to the Sea Life Aquarium in Orlando, Florida.

I love fish. That is what drew me to scuba diving. I might just have gone just a tad overboard with the fish pics. Feel free to move along. 🙂 Here we go . . .

I first want to say that I love this aquarium. If you are in or near Orlando, visit it!

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Part 1 of this series contained information about our leaving Cyprus for our Christmas holiday in the U.S. and the first day we spent there. It was at Universal Studios and was a lot of fun.

We then drove close to Ocala, Florida so we could pick up my son, Kyle, the next morning. I was very excited to spend time with him, as we only see each other a couple of times a year now that he is in the U.S. Army. We had three days planned with him, although I wish it had been more.

We first took Roc the Dog for a walk. Roc lived with us for about a year when Kyle first joined the Army, but moved to Kyle’s dad’s house about a year ago since we were planning to live on our boat in late 2022. It was delightful to see the old guy again. Here is a picture of him. I have no idea why we didn’t take a picture of him with us. Just not thinking!

After walking Roc, we went to an escape room. Little did we know that we had selected one of the most difficult rooms. Needless to say, we did not escape. However, they told us we were 90 percent of the way there, which is farther than most teams make it. So there’s that.

We went to the Kennedy Space Center on our second day. It was incredible!! Got there when it opened and left when it closed. I highly recommend it, for both adults and children. Plenty to see and do.

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It has been quite some time since we posted. We don’t have any new sailing adventures to share but we thought we would share some of the adventures we took when we were in the U.S. in December and January. Actually, we forgot to take pictures after the first few days so this is really a recap of mid-December.

We left Cyprus on Dec. 17 and flew to Florida. We and many others were clearly in the Christmas spirit as evidenced by the display boards in the Larnaca, Cyprus Airport:

I was particularly excited for the first part of our trip as we were going to spend three days with my son, Kyle, who was on block leave from the U.S. Army. We had a free day before we met with him, so Michael and I visited Universal Studios. It was really fun. Here are several pictures of our trip to the theme park.

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We’ve been in Cyprus for 10 days and haven’t left the marina. 🙂 It’s all good. We decided to delay our sightseeing so we could get some things done on the boat. (Also, one of us <me> had some intestinal issues for several days, so we didn’t want to stray too far from the boat, if you get my drift.)

As noted in our previous post, we purchased, marked and installed our new anchor rode (80 meters of chain). We also replaced a bilge float switch, fixed a leak on the port side bilge, cleaned the inside and outside of the boat, purchased a water hose and nozzle so we can get potable water from the dock, gave our old anchor rode away, discovered that we need to order new switches for the starboard head, discovered that the port air conditioning/heating control board needs to be replaced, discovered that one of our speakers isn’t working (and ordered two new ones), made an effort to use up the food in the fridge/freezer, completed and documented an inventory of all spare parts and liquids we have on board and what we need to order, checked the brushes on the generator, organized the spare parts under the settee (for hopefully the third and last time), did four loads of laundry, started reaching out to marinas in Israel looking for a place to stay after we leave Cyprus, copied all of the pictures and videos from my phone to the laptop, trashed the yellow “jerry cans” as we won’t need them anymore, lined the remaining shelves in the galley with non slip material, pumped the oil out of the port engine compartment for the fourth (?) time (we have to run the port engine when we come into a marina for maneuverability and it sprays oil the entire time), and had two actual Yanmar mechanics look at the port engine. It hasn’t been all work and no play, of course, and we are very pleased with what we got done.

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Today’s post is dedicated to our beautiful new chain!

Actually, this might be of interest to only a few of you since it is about marking our new chain and installing it. If that sounds super interesting to you, you are in luck!

We first posted on the Med Sailing Facebook page to request input as to what length and type of chain we should purchase. The top answers were 100 meters, 75 meters, and 80 meters. We decided to go with 80 meters of 10mm chain. Most people use HDG chain, but we decided to go with a new “solid zinc” chain that is made in Italy.

The next step was to buy it. Thankfully, the chandlery here at Ayia Napa Marina had two types of chain in stock, one of which we wanted. They delivered it to the dock by our boat the same day. It is beautiful! And heavy.

The next step was to remove our old chain and tie the anchor to the boat so it wouldn’t drop into the water.

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We are officially out of the Middle East. We left Suez at about 4:30 p.m. on Dec. 5 and arrived at Ayia Napa Marina, Cyprus at about 5:00 p.m. on Dec. 7. This post contains information about our Suez Canal transit as well as our arrival in Cyprus.

When transiting the Suez Canal, vessels are required to have a pilot on board. Our pilot was scheduled to arrive at 5:00 a.m. on Dec. 5. He arrived at about 7:00 a.m. We had gotten up at 4:30 a.m., largely to give me time to take the dinghy out to the buoy and remove our line (by the way, the dinghy floats! <smile>) and give us time to eat breakfast. Michael actually went back to bed because he hadn’t gotten much sleep. Anyway, the pilot eventually arrived and we left.

I found some interesting factoids about the Suez Canal, just three quick screenshots. In short, the Suez Canal is a critical waterway for the Planet. It is extremely busy, which we can attest to from our experience. We were the only cruising yacht on the entire canal.

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This is part three of the Dec. 2 post. Part 1 was dedicated to the Egyptian Museum, part 2 to the pyramids and Great Sphinx of Giza and the Nile River dinner cruise. This post contains information about our visits to Saqqara and Memphis on Dec. 1.

Saqqara contains the oldest complete stone building complex known in history, the Pyramid of Djoser, built early in the Third Dynasty, during the reign of King Netjerykhet, more well-known as Djoser. According to egymonuments.gov.eg, before Djoser’s reign, royal and elite Egyptians were buried in mastabas, a type of funerary structure generally rectangular in shape and built over the tomb proper, which was underground. In contrast, the Step Pyramid is composed of six stacked mastabas, thus creating the step effect. The complex was a landmark achievement for Egyptian architecture. It was the first instance of the mass use of limestone in construction. According to the same source referenced above, Imhotep, its architect, may have been responsible for this major innovation.

There are two large open courts, one on each side of the pyramid. The king held a festival, the Heb-sed Festival, in the south court. The Heb-sed (or just Sed) festival was an ancient Egyptian royal ceremony that celebrates the rule of and rejuvenated the king and regenerated his power. The festivals were celebrated after a ruler had held the throne for 30 years and then every three to four years after that. They kept the king strong and allowed him to rule effectively and claim control over all of Egypt. Its presence in the funerary complex also allowed Djoser to continue to benefit from the ritual in the afterlife. Handy.

The complex is surrounded by a limestone wall over 10 meters high. The wall had numerous false doors which were carved into it after it was built. The single entrance to the enclosure is on the eastern side of the wall through the one doorway that is real. This leads to the entrance colonnade, which has 20 pairs of columns. There are 24 small chambers between the columns that are thought to have housed statues of the King or deities.

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I am breaking this into three posts because they will be too long. They are already long! The first two pertain to what we did on Nov. 30. We already shared the Egyptian Museum experience with you in part 1 of this blog. After that, we saw the Giza pyramids and the Sphinx. That, and pictures of the Nile River dinner cruise make up part 2.

The Giza pyramids, as you know, were built by aliens. Okay, not really. They are, of course, amazing, but I am more amazed now than I was before. When you look closely at the stones, you see that they are perfectly shaped. The angles are 90 degrees. Because they are perfectly shaped, there is no adhesive substance between them. It is just stone on stone. (Wikipedia mentions mortar, but I don’t know where it was used.) It was initially 146.6 meters tall and was the tallest man-made structure in the world for more than 3,800 years! Due to the smooth limestone casing being worn away, it is currently 138.5 (some sources say 138.8) meters. You can see some of the smooth casing on the pyramid next to it, but you will not see any in pictures of the Great Pyramid. The stones (primarily limestone) used to build it weighed about six million tons in total. There are three chambers inside the Great Pyramid. We did not go into any of them.

Remember the tiny “statue” we saw in the Egyptian Museum? That was Khufu, the dude who built the Great Pyramid. And that is the only statue they have of him. The irony is not lost on anyone. I should mention that Khufu’s wives, children, grandchildren, and mother were also buried nearby, as were various courtiers. This was standard practice and in accordance with their belief in the Afterlife.

Another super interesting fact is that in 1954 (just 1954!!) two huge boat pits were discovered buried at the south foot of the pyramid. Why? The area right next to where the Giza pyramids were built was completely covered with water. That was true until 150 years ago. So they used boats to deliver the stones. Again, how amazing they were!!

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We left El Tor at 12:30 a.m. on November 28. We left at that time to catch the best weather and ensure we would arrive in Suez on the 29th.

We had another “first” on this short trip. We were happily motoring along and all of a sudden our engine lost RPMs. I mean, down to just about no RPMs. It kept running, but wouldn’t rev up. We’d checked the fuel tank filter before we left, but we checked it again to be sure. It was clean. We’d turned off the engine and turned it back on. It started right up but it was shaking a lot. Michael asked me to put it in forward, neutral and reverse while he looked at the engine. He told me he thought we had an issue with the prop.

This happened when we were right on the edge of the shipping lane in a very busy Gulf of Suez. Thankfully (!!) the winds were extremely light and there were basically no waves. The little movement we had while we were working on the problem moved us slightly farther away from the shipping lane. This allowed us to work on the problem without worrying that we would end up smack dab in the middle of the lane.

Michael donned his dive mask and stainless steel knife and dove down. When he came up the first time, he told me that there was a bunch of plastic wrapped around the prop. He went down about four times and then handed a very large bundle of plastic and other stuff (I think it had to do with fishing) to me. He asked me to go down to finish the job, which I did. I only had to unwind a string from the prop to clear it entirely. I dove down a second time just to make sure the prop was clear. It was. We started the engine, revved her right up and went on our merry way.

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