We left Al Shaheen last September hauled out at Gold River Marina in Chester Basin, Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. Her mast was taken down and she was fully shrink wrapped. The previous year we had done the same and found her bone dry and no mildew aboard in the Spring. Gold River is a rather quaint but very friendly and caring marina with excellent staff. We would recommend it for anyone over-wintering in Nova Scotia. Length/displacement limit is about 45 ft and 15 tonnes.

Anyone wanting information on Nova Scotia yards for haulout and storage, please contact me.
John Franklin

I can see we missed out on reporting the 2014 season entirely! In fact we left Ipswich in late May after a major repainting job, then sailed to the Kiel Canal and into the Baltic to join the OCC Baltic Rally. This took us through Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and into Finland before leaving for St Petersburg. After a wonderful visit to Russia we idled arounf East Finland for a few weeks, hauled out early due to a house move and left Al Shaheen in a shed in Loviisa, Finland for the winter.

We launched in late May this year (2015) and sailed to Helsinki where we had a small get-together for OCC Finnish members and made a presentation to Vladimir Ivankiv of his PO Medal. Since then we have progressed steadily westwards through the Turku Archipelago and are now on the eastern extremity of the Àland islands. Still very cold.

We shall cross to Sweden once we have explored Àland and thence to Denmark.