The Flame trees aflame

This year's been great for flowers and the trees in flower.  Our Flame Tree (Poinciana) is out in full bloom.  See some more here, and the progression of one of our orchids.

Flame tree near our place.  Our own is too big to get photo of...

Old School Chums in touch again: David Edmunds and John Nicholas

Through the Canberra Grammar Class of '67 Blog, which Steve Padge and I set up in January last year, I've been put back in touch with a couple of old school mates that I haven't seen or heard of since we left school in the spring of 1967.
David Edmunds is Cycling Europe, with his partner Roz, and John Nicholas and family now live in London.
David's Blog is the link here, also linked on the LINKS list at the right.
Nick's news is at the Grammar Blog, here. Also at LINKS.  The Nicholas' are keen sailors, with son Ben a National and World Champion sailor...

The Nicholas Yacht, a Beneteau First 40.7 at "the Rock" in the 2007 Fastnet Race 

Emails to/from David:

Cape to Cairo: new Blog

I'm now writing about the Cape to Cairo trip here.

Cape to Cairo: Notes

David Hall in the 2010 Cape to Cairo.  Who's David Hall? What's the car??

Notes from the organiser, Roger Pearce "below the fold" (as we cool bloggers say).  ie, click on "Read More"....  I paid the entry fee today, so it's all go.  Here's the website for the event.

Cape Town to Cairo car rally

The route in the spreadsheet below follows the one above

I just committed last night to accompany Gordon Ketelby as his co-driver in a rally from Cape Town to Cairo, from 6 September to 21 October.  Not sure of details yet; Gordon will let me know when he's back in Oz.  He's sailing in some races in Europe at the moment.  We got to know Gordon at the King's Cup last year, where he was crew on Baby Tonga, one of our competitors.  We asked him to join us on Xena for the Hong Kong to San Fernando race in April and he flew up from Melbourne for that.  He's a guy about my age, retired having sold a business about the same time we sold Wall Street International, 4-5 years ago.
He loves sailing and cars.  Wise man....
Below jpeg you can print out (I had a link to pdf, but I think this works better...). Be sure to print in Landscape not Portrait:

The dogs in their raincoats

Arlene gets the dogs in order: Basil, Marcus, Nikki, ready in their raincoats.
Click to enlarge.  But caution!  See warning below....

My apologies to those of delicate sensibilities: I didn't notice quite how excited Basil was to wear his new raincoat, till I saw this photo in full size (click it to enlarge).  So: "parental guidance" warning when you do enlarge it...
This was just yesterday, front yard of our place, Siena One, Discovery Bay.
The dogs love their coats! Put their heads straight in.  Basil didn't have one for a while -- I thought he didn't need one as he's a Labrador who loves water, and wouldn't notice that he didn't have one.  But no, he kicked up a fuss, clearly jealous of Marcus', and when I got him one too, he was delighted.  (You can see just how priapically happy he is...)

The flowers and trees are glorious this year: the bougainvillia everywhere out in bright bloom, the mango tree heavy with fruit, our new passionfruit is bearing its first fruit, and the orchids I dotted about in the crooks of trees, in the shade, are now flowering here and there:

Orchid in the crook of the Frangipani tree. 

Same Orchid as above, one day later (15th May). And now there were three....

And then there were four. (25th May)

I'm doing more on our Xena blog these days, so hop over there to see what our gorgeous boat's up to.  Click here.  She's currently on her way to Koh Samui in Thailand, for the Samui Regatta, in the fist week of June.  It'll take her around 9 days to get there.  She's in the care of delivery skipper, Grant Dalton, of NZ, Noel (our full-time boat manager) and Mike from the Philippines.

We won this Regatta last year, in a close fought tussle which went to the wire, so we're defending our crown this year. It'll be tough, as there's some new competition from Australia, including an Aussie sailing legend Pete Sorenson ("Soro").
After the Regatta, we're going to cruise for a few days a bit north of Samui, then back home while Grant and "the Boyz" bring her back to Hong Kong.
We did some cruising around Phuket in January this year, after King's Cup, and it was great.  There's some photos and news on the Xena blog, here.  Everywhere you stop, there's good food, friendly people and massage.... (every beach has a massage station!).  And clear, clean, warm waters.  And some coral reefs, still....
Ok, let's finish off with some more colour: the park outside our back door:

Multi-hued bougainvillia

And some of our greeeeen organic passionfruit...

We planted this around February, if I recall. This photo taken on 15th May