[Public-List] Late Christmas greetings

[Richard Mair]

Dear friends,

We wish you everything good this Christmas season, however you spend it. We
hope it includes time with those you love and spent doing things you love,
and the gift of good memories to take with you into the days ahead.

And the picture? Having spent the summer sailing from Halifax to Toronto,
including traveling up the St. Lawrence, sailboats are naturally on our
mind. And having arrived safely (though our blog has yet to catch up) we
are also feeling more relaxed and inclined to take time to enjoy life and
just have some fun. So I had fun creating a Christmas sailboat to share
with you.

It's been an interesting year. We made changes - to the boat, to the
province we live in, back to living on the boat. Living on the boat in
winter – there's something not quite right with that part of the picture!
We're at the dock in Toronto, coming to terms with winter's early arrival,
working on having lots of heat inside to counteract the ice and snow
outside. Less heat today – as I (Margaret) write this, we are without shore
power after an ice storm, with more winds yet to come. Last night
electricity arcing along the lines treated us to a fiery show. Today we are
laying in supplies of fuel for our alcohol heater and stove, while our
generator chugs away allowing us to use one of our small electric heaters.
We are warmly dressed and hoping that power will be restored sooner than
the worst case the authorities keep giving us – three days.

(Update: power was restored in the wee hours of this morning, and our
electric heaters are running again as well as our bubblers. Just in time,
as ice was beginning to grind against the hull, and we were running low on
fuel. Many thanks, Gord, for going out of your way and down our dark and
slippery hill to help us get more things to keep us warm!)

And we thought it was cold when we were on part of the St. Lawrence! We
cruised from July to September – from Halifax south to Lunenburg, then
around the coast and to Charlottetown PEI, then through Quebec and up the
St. Lawrence. A bit later in the season than we wanted, a little less time
to spend in interesting places than we would have preferred. And much
colder than we expected as passed by Saguenay and Tadoussac. The journey
was interesting and challenging and with one unexpected result: an
improvement in my, Margaret's, balance and more recovery from Ramsay Hunt
syndrome.

Ramsay Hunt Syndrome – that's a big reason that things have been a little
different. It came into my life in January 2012, and since then a chunk of
my time has been taken up with working on recovery. Although I'm still
using a cane to help with balance and my face is slightly twisted, I've
come a very long way. And I'm glad to be where I am instead of where I was.
And other parts of life have been coming back into focus.

So now we are here. We found ourselves a place to moor, close to part of
our family and a lot of our friends. Now we'll be looking at cruising
around the lake, at least for a while. And spending more time with our
children. And giving our grandson an early start on the joys of sailing.

It's a pretty good life, challenges and all.

Hope yours is too!

Wishing good things for you,

Margaret and Richard s/v Into The Blue
Pictures at sailingintotheblue.WordPress.com

Richard