Biosphera!

Yeah! The child has a name! or rather the boat. It's called Biosphera and together with her, we will discover the biosphere and explore biosphere reserves! If the biosphere has mercy on us.

We are now in Cogolin, France. In the midst of the rich and famous from Monaco to St Tropez, surrounded by mega yachts and high-tech racing yachts. There are also a few charter boats here and a few "normal" sailors. We are close to the road, which is practical and noisy. Just 200 metres from us is a large amusement park with mega ship swings and rides as well as the monster truck show, where pick-up trucks with oversized wheels jump onto cars ready for the scrap heap.

We don't notice much of all these "pleasures". We try to regain our strength after a very strenuous time and prepare the boat for a long journey. All this at 35° in the shade. Overall, we slightly underestimated how exhausting the departure would be. We had to finalise both jobs and prepare for our absence, we wanted to sublet both flats, but then had to give up the larger one at short notice. We had to move all the furniture and personal belongings from the two flats to a storage facility in Brandenburg and pack for the big departure at the same time. It feels like we've been doing nothing but packing and unpacking for three weeks, we're completely exhausted. When we arrived here, the French seller of the boat was supposed to repair or re-install a lot of things, some of which were finished, but a lot was not. Then we had to finalise the financing, finalise the insurance and and and.... . Our bodies then took time off accordingly: First Katja was down with a cold, then me. But we're slowly getting over that and our spirits are returning! Thanks to a storage system that Katja has now largely installed and the built-in furniture built by Oli, the boat no longer looks like a storage room. Things find their place, we find our place on the boat and the boat finds its place in our lives! Anja sewed us awnings, which we have now finally installed. What a difference! Not only is the outside area usable again, but the inside no longer heats up quite so quickly. Yesterday I went out for the first time to check the anchor chain and the new anchor. My first swim in the Mediterranean with the boat rocking heavily. A new experience when trying to shower off: the shower hose had burst as we had only closed the stopcock on the shower head, but not the tap at the start of the hose. There was water in the hose, it got hot and the hose burst. While we were motoring, of course, so that we didn't hear the pump emptying the contents of our water tank into the freshly cleaned and tidied storage box in which the shower hose ran. How good that there were only about 150 litres left in the tank. We didn't let the good mood get the better of us! I was allowed to practise harbour manoeuvres with the wide boat and only one engine. (Catamarans have two engines and are therefore very easy to manoeuvre in the harbour. A trimaran only has one engine in the centre hull and can therefore be manoeuvred more like a normal monohull boat - only much wider). Then mooring sideways and another highlight: the boat was to be given its name! Susanne designed a great lettering for us and Mr Rust from the printing company of the same name then helped us to get it into the right format. Now we wanted to use the calm harbour situation to apply the large lettering reasonably straight and without many bubbles. And it worked! We were super happy, our baby is slowly coming to life. We celebrated with soap bubbles, just like the logo, but the real christening ceremony will follow when we have the registration papers in our hands and the second lettering has been applied on the other side.

Then our first reverse parking manoeuvre in a tight space and without outside help, which we managed well. Then we quickly emptied the back box and scooped out the 150 litres of water. While I was sitting in the cramped back box, completely soaked and still dripping with sweat, I felt a real sense of happiness. There was no way I would have swapped this moment for my cosy Berlin couch in front of the TV! This is no joke. I feel alive and when I scoop water out of my torso, I'm doing something essential that needs to be done and my body comes into play. It feels good and gives me a wonderful anticipation of what lies ahead! With all the efforts and sometimes adversities in the preparation, we have received a lot of support from many lovely people who have helped us with what they can and we can't do. Thank you very much for that!