Wednesday, September 21, 2011

An other trip comes to a close.

We are home!!!!
It is good to be home, however the trip that took us over the Rhine, Main, Main Danube canal, Danube, Danube Black Sea canal. Black sea, Bosporus,Sea of Marmara, Dardanelles, and into the Aegean Sea is one we will look back on and have fond memories of.  We locked through a total of 70 locks which took us 406 meter above sea level and back down again.

The different people and cultures we met has enriched our lives.  Before and during our trip we heard  horror stories about crossing boarders, especially in the former east block countries. Our experience is quite different in that most everyone we met was friendly and helpful.
The Aegean sea where le rêve is resting on the hard right now is an absolutely wonderful cruising destination. It is always a bit questionable, and nerve wracking, if we can find a good and secure place to leave Le rêve when we go home. We could not be more pleased to have found Didim Marina to keep her, and  Yachtworks to look after her.

Some interesting statistics.
The total trip from the time we started till we reached our end destination took 90 days of which 60 days we were boating. The total distance covered was approximately 2300 nm ( 4250 km ) 38 nm  (70 km) per day. Total engine hours for the trip was 385 hours or just over 6 hours per day of running.
Le rêve performed exceptional at 3.2 miles per gallon or 1.8 gallon per hour on average. Keep in mind that we did have the current in our favor for most of the trip. The Rhine was the exception where we had the current against us however this was only about 150 nm.  Sometime we encountered a very strong current. the strongest we saw was a current that pushed us along at 12.9 kn SOG at 1600 RPM Average was more like  8 knots at 1600 RPM.

In closing I want to say that sometime I wonder why I take the time to keep this blog. But I know there are many people following along, and that more than makes the afford of keeping the blog worth while.  
We thank you for your interest and comments and say good bye till the next leg when we will once again continue the "lerevereport".




4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your posts are entertaining and informative. I envy your adventure. Someday!!!

wanderingsparks@yahoo.com

vanlenthephotoalbum said...

Nice to see you had a good time

karel de regge said...

We hope to copy your trip and use all we have learned from your blog .We did the rivercruise from Bucharest to Nuremberg.it also was a lot of good times and gave us a feel for what the Danube is like.

ussv Angel Louise said...

We are on Catalac 12m cat trying to see if we can do the same trip from Holland to the Black Sea.

Worried about our hull speed doing only 7.5 knots...

Any advice appreciated. Great job. Ed and Sue
attyedkelly@gmail.com