So it's now been three weeks since we have not woken up to a new view out of our porthole, not consulted the weather forecast (when we had a reliable wifi connection) and not plotted our day's route..

We have been back home trying to get used to life on land again, and the variant pleasures of autumn with it's beautiful display of red, yellows and brown; crisp mornings and decidedly shorter days; cosy fires in the evenings; world cup rugby, and walking, running and driving instead of sailing.

We saw 6 countries....experiencing 4 of them in some depth: The Netherlands, 39 days, and Sweden, 51 days, consumed the largest part of our trip. We loved the friendly, cheerful Swedish who really make the most of their Summer: they can do this easily as their coastline is extensive with thousands of islands comprising the Stockholm Archipelago alone. Their greetings of 'Hey!' meaning 'Hi' never ceased to amuse and cheer me up. At first we thought they were just over-friendly, but this is their normal greeting!

The Netherlands for me, was a discovery of my maternal heritage as we explored the area where my Mum lived as a child and where my Oupa lived, married my Ouma and worked as a 'dominee' and artist. I managed to slightly improve my Dutch and sample deliciously decadent stroop waffles, pannekoeken and bitterballen!!!

We spent a total of 121 days (11 of which were back home) sailing 1678M (nautical miles) from Portsmouth to Storra Nassa, north-east Stockholm Archipelago via the Kiel Canal and southern Sweden, and back via the Gota Canal and the Kiel Canal, to southern Netherlands, where the boat stays for the winter.

Of this we sailed or motored 83 days with an average of 20M per day. We had 27 days off either sight-seeing or waiting for suitable weather. These days varied between lovely relaxing days exploring, cycling or just chilling to days spent cleaning the boat, doing maintenance, washing clothes or shopping. Clothes washing depended on availability of washing machines, correct coins to operate it, and the efficiency of the tumble dryer for drying bedding. Never again will I underestimate the convenience of an onsite washing machine and tumble dryer at home!!

Grocery shopping would often determine what you ate for dinner that night. Not always did we have the luxury of a large supermarket accessible by bike or within walking distance. So we sometimes had to contend with a small convenience store which may or may not have had fresh edible-looking vegetables. We are very lucky to have a freezer onboard and I have become a recent connoisseur of all sorts of frozen veg of all discriptions, even edamame beans!! Daily we would take some meat or fish out of the freezer which we stocked up when we found big, well-stocked supermarkets.

Our longest sailing day was 78M from Eastbourne to Calais via Dover! We had good sailing conditions that day and so made good mileage, pressing on to Calais, taking advantage of the long days of summer. it took us 14 hours of sailing but we had the help of Marc D'Halluin at the time which made the day fairly easy.

We averaged 20M per day which meant we averaged 4 hrs of sailing/motoring daily, although we had many longer days and a few shorter ones.

Our shortest sailing day was a mere 6M from Nynashamn, on the east coast of Sweden, south to an anchorage where we executed our first bows-to-trees mooring with a stern anchor out These moorings were never straight-forward, as beautiful natural bays don't have the convenience of nice even jetties to tie up to, and rocks can be steep and slippery! But they did mean that we had some space to ourselves and that space was free!!

Most, 86 out of 110 days were spent in marinas; 12 at town quays, 9 in fishing harbours and 14 anchorages. It was definitely possible to have anchored more than we did in the Swedish Archipelago. Yes, that meant dinghying to the jetty or the shore to use the facilities, but they afforded you more privacy, and were free! Most natural anchorages in Sweden have composting bogs, read long-drops, if you're South African! In fact, the Swedish charts have a symbol indicating the presence of bogs!

Marinas varied hugely from being relatively luxurious comprising spotlessly clean shower blocks, laundry facilities, restaurants, shops and friendly, welcoming harbour masters, to just a mere composting bog as was the case in one tiny fishing harbour on an island at the northern end of Gotland, and anything and everything in between!! Prices were definitely not always indicative of the facilities on offer either! Anything between 12 and 35 euros was extracted for a night's stay with the average being circa 22 euros.

In total we had 13 family or friends join us on our odyssey. Often it was just Martyn and I on the boat so at any one time, there were between two and five on the boat. With 3 cabins and two heads, this was very manageable although four was a good number. We have a big mattress-sized cushion fixed to our coach roof which was a great sun-tanning and chill spot, so it was always easy to find a spot for yourself, if you weren't sailing, making tea or navigating. We carry two bikes on board increasing the variety of our off-board entertainment beyond walking, running, sight-seeing or chilling with a book.

We had mostly fantastic weather during our trip months of June, July, August and September. Only for a total of five days, did we have to wait for suitable weather. Four of those days were in Cuxhaven where we had to wait out a cold front in order to extricate ourselves from a river mouth with strong currents, shallow entrance and stormy onshore winds.

A highly recommended sailing odyssey with variations of open sea, canals, locks, bridges, deep sea, rock-strewn island hopping and shallow sea channels! Never a dull moment and lots of cultural and natural discoveries to boot!

Watch out for our next blog which will emerge once we know the timing of our next move. The move will most likely be westwards and then south toward the sunny, warm Mediterranean!