Sponsored canal trip

Post date: Mar 24, 2015 1:18:26 PM

I have just learned that my wonderful brother Quentin and his lovely wife Denise are planning a boat venture of their own - though quite different in nature. I enclose the full text of their announcement. Read it - it's hilarious!

Dear all, sorry but this is an irresponsible circular to our total address list, feel free to delete !

Honeypot Children's Charity ( support for children who are full-time carers)

http://www.honeypot.org.uk/

Quentin & Denise are doing a sponsored canal trip in their twin engine gentleman's motor sailor (without sails) to Bordeaux and back this summer ( from Aigues-Mortes) ie the Canal du Rhone a Sete, the Canal du Midi, the Canal Lateral a la Garonne, and the Garonne herself, and back. The aim of this trip is to try every South France wine and drink lots of claret at the turning point. Shouldn't be hard.

Unfortunately our schedule is so heavy and our time so short we can not set up the sponsorship arrangements, but by sheer good fortune Q's brother Dominic is doing a sponsored solo sail round Britain (the fool, how many vineyards will he be going through?), for the same charity (what a coincidence),  and being a wizard has set up a whole site and everything, so if you have any spare cash please drop in to his site and donate. https://sites.google.com/site/domsroundbritainsail/

Actually, his trip looks quite interesting, if dry, as it were: he claims he will have no alcohol aboard, which is a fat lot of use in an emergency. Our current wine reserves are smaller than the diesel (1100l) but larger than the water (430l), so we are getting there. The spirits locker is tolerably well stocked, we can cover most of the more frequently required cocktails, though we do have to fabricate our own version of Galliano at present.

His trip looks fairly flat and easy, maybe several hundred miles or so, mostly straight lines, whereas ours is over 800km, very wiggly, with an arduous vertical lift of about 200m (up and down twice, what's more), + over 240 locks to bounce through, so we all know who is undertaking the really tricky challenge. And our boat is a lot heavier than his which is just going to bobble up and down on a few waves.  And of course he has sails to help him, which we are having do without as we also have to negotiate bridges. (Tricky little low ones with lots of gouges on the sides, not the Forth Rail Bridge or anything spacious like that). We can't see him getting any sponsorship for his little friperie, so do please help him out, you don't need to tell him you are actually sponsoring our epic endeavour.

Ah well, yard-arm, sun, etc, must dash.

Bestest/Bisous as appropriate,

Q & D

xxx

https://sites.google.com/site/domsroundbritainsail/charity

(Apparently the minimum gift on these sites is £1 so some of you may have to club together to make a donation. If you disapprove of children's charities, just send the cash to us, deliveries of Galliano by courier are not cheap.)