Goodbye, land.: Canal life and around

Internet is rare ware around. Désolé!
So much has happened since last time I blogged - I don't even know where to start! (I guess "the beginning" is always a winner.)

The Caledonian Canal is an adventure on its own. In many ways. First of all, you're sailing a large yacht in freshwater, several metres above sea level on narrow ways with forests and mountains all around you. Secondly, you have to watch out for the famous men in orange - the boating tourists. In few words: you don't need any kind of experience to be allowed to rent a boat in the canal. Praise the heavens for all the fenders we've got!
We've been through the canal twice already, so the third time everything seemed to go automatic.
The third day in the canal we spent on getting supplies, washing our clothes and searching for internet. It was to become a very long day.
First of all, the nearest shop was miles away and, well, we only had a boat and our feet. Secondly, washing machines over here are pretty expensive, so we decided to wash our clothes in the super clean canal freshwater. Did i mention it was cold? Luckily, half of the clothes got more or less clean, and we did make a whole lot of tourist pictures a whole lot better.
After our washing adventure, we set out to find some internet. Not an easy task in Scotland, it seemed. We finally found a restaurant with the big, beautiful inscription of "FREE WIFI" on the sign. Immediate applause. Now, the clue with this restaurant was that the internet really did exist there, but you had to wait at least one hour for one page to open completely. When dad gave up on finding the weather forecasts we finally gave in to the fact that we were savage people on a boat, in the middle of Scotland. Oh well.
On the day of the departure we were placed behind a big "puffer" - an old british boat fuelled on coal. Not only was its massive hull threatening us with squeezing and crushing - the crew were all tourists and were chit-chatting loudly about the strange sailing ship with the fishermen from the north. A guy in the back asked us where we were heading and when we waved goodbye only a few minutes later, all the women in the front were shouting "safe travels" and "cheer Mr. Marley from us!". Tourists... (I am of course kidding at this moment, realising we must seem pretty stupid ourselves on our little humble boat on our way to the Caribbean.)

Out in the sea again we headed for Northern Ireland, via Crinan - the famous other canal of Great Britain. We did not care to get in after passing 28 locks and finally feeling at home again, so after a short night we went straight for the Irish city Bellycastle where I now sit in the most beautiful marina with the most fantastic internet connection!
Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself here. Out on the british sea a new game called "Bird or Shark?" started. Last time we were here we saw several basking sharks around and we were now certain we would see more of this large, fantastic shark. It's around 5 metres long, has an enormous mouth and always stays on the surface of the water!
After a good amount of hours of "nah, just a bird!" I started remembering my last encounter of birds. The nature is really testing me with this one. And if that was not enough, what do you think the main population in Bellycastle consists of? Thousands of seabirds, of course! I need the best of luck to get my sleep tonight. Them birds...

Bellycastle is beautiful, as I was saying. There is a large park just next to the marina and a nice little fish n' chip shop next to the park. This was our dinner today, and one of the other guests told us we were eating the best fish and chips in all of ireland! She herself had driven 50 miles by car to get here today. The other part of the population (at least the one we hear quite well) is the rubber burners. A nice choir of cheap engine and hungry bird will definitely be lulling us to sleep tonight. Let's just call it an adventure...

As the weather gets colder we're hurrying down south along with the birds. We hope to get to Dublin in a couple of days and then the plan is to head down to Cork, south in Ireland, to wait for the good weather to cross the Biscay Bay. Exotic land feels closer. Literally. The sunburn on my left cheek is constantly reminding me that we're still on "vacation" and that there is more yet to come.

I will try and get ready some gear so you'll hear from us more often, in the meantime I'll let you look through some pictures of the last week.

O'hoy!