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These are the voyages of the sailing vessel Pétillant. Her original eight-month mission: to sail from Baltimore to France via Florida and the Bahamas, to successfully navigate the shoals of the French douane, to boldly go where few Maine Coon cats have gone before was completed in 2008. Now she is berthed in Port Medoc and sails costal Spain, France, and the UK during the summer months.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Summer in France

We have loaded a number of new photos to the FLickr site, and video will becoming soon, as well. We hope to organize the photos in a day or so, showing what part of the trip they describe.

Petillant is still in Port Medoc, where she arrived on June 28. Customs clearance is still in progress, with an agent based in La Rochelle - our latest word from him is that he thinks we will be able to clear the boat through, without paying the import/VAT. We have purchased our internal cruising passeport at the douane in Bordeaux, so we have the proper internal papers. However, without the customs clearance we are hesitant to go anywhere that we could be controlle by the douane, so Petillant will likely sit in Port Medoc for the rest of the summer.

Not that we don't have other things to do - we have made major progress in working on the house, with a terrasse underway, with the architecte now under contract to give us a rennovation plan, and with continuing work to clean up the grounds. We have been busy, and will continue to be busy thru the end of August, at least. We will be going off on a canal barge cruise at the end of August/early September, for a week, with friends from the US.

Since it does not look like we will be doing much sailing this summer, we are also considering setting up a blog of life here in France. There will be a link here when it gets set up, probably some time after the middle of August. Stay tuned...