Grace's itinerary?
Jerry returned from Florida where his brother died last Sat. after a hard battle which he ultimately won, but we don't usually think of it as winning. He was very sick and in extreme pain, so short of miracles, which we believe in, this is considered a win regardless of how hard it is to accept.
The whole time Jerry was gone, Grace sat through one of the Med's notorious gales, siroccos. I turned the radio or TV up very loud so that I couldn't hear the wind whistling through the rigging. Jerry was sure it wasn't as bad as I said, but only my imagination since it was the first time on Grace alone. The wind intermittently blew between 30 & 40 knots during most of the time he was gone and continued when he returned just to show him. Grace was covered with a layer of crap (jet fuel from the airport mixed with salt and red dust from the Sahara) which has to be literally scrubbed from everything. Downpours in between helped a little in cleaning the rigging. On Sat. someone will come and try to remove it from the mast and any other rigging we can reach.
I have been sanding and varnishing so that Grace will be beautiful when we sail for Turkey. We will go South to Naples, the Aeolian Islands, through the Strait of Messina with a possible side trip to Palermo, across the Adriatic to Greece, through the Corinth Canal to the Southern coast of Turkey to the marina at Kemer which you can check out at www.kemermarina.com. We hope to explore Ithaca, Ulysses home island, at sometime since we are supposedly following his trek to return to Penelope. We have the latest translation of the Odyssey which is wonderful reading because of the extensive explanation at the beginning. I will send the author when I can remember it.
We will try to keep up better email contact, but it seems S.A. had much better systems than Italy where everything is difficult and expensively wonderful.
Lots of love xoxoxoxo
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- May 12, 2004