I managed a week or so in Antibes before building up a few more BA air miles on my way back to Miami to take a MCSE bootcamp. An intensive two weeks later I was on another plane on Christmas Eve flying back to Cornwall for my first Christmas there in quite a few years.

Following the festivities Vix and I headed home to Antibes and got ready for a ski trip to Isola 2000. Isola is a ski resort in the Alpes Maritimes around 1.5 hours drive from the airport in Nice. Since January 1st all bus fares on the Côte d’Azur have been reduced to 1 euro; so from Antibes to Isola was a grand total of 2 euros each!

We were lucky enough to have good base of fresh snow fall just before we arrived and we had blue skies nearly everyday so had a great time. If anyone is thinking of heading up there try and make it during the week if you can as the slopes were nearly deserted, the weekends however get quite packed with a lot of day trippers from the coast. I have also heard that February is very busy as it is the French school holidays. I will try and post some photos from our trip there, as soon as Antonia gets back from Thailand with them.

This photo is of the top of the Peak chairlift on Whistler mountain. This is the highest point and gives access to some of the best black, double black, and triple black diamond runs which are the hardest marked runs.

The Canadian/USA system of marking ski runs is a little different to Europe. In Canada the runs are marked green then blue then black diamond, double black diamond and triple black diamond. Below is a page from a Whistler guide book showing two of the triple black diamond runs. As you can imagine these runs are experts only and I don’t know if we’ll ever reach that level.

As you can see in this picture there is still lots of snow on the ground from the record breaking start to the season.

Unfortunately there is not a lot of fresh snow in the forecast right now, but we are taking the chance to improve our skiing and are hoping there will be some before we leave.

Sad to say our time in Whistler came to a close all too soon. We had an amazing time up there, and thoroughly recommend it to anyone who likes skiing or boarding off-piste.

After a few days in Ft Lauderdale we headed back to England for a typically flying visit. Somehow we managed to squeeze in Sophie and Legs' wedding, an aerial tour of Gloucester and I passed my Captains exam, before rejoining Motor Yacht Dream in Florida. 

We are now in Savannah, Georgia; where we are going to be spending the next two months or so as the boat is in the shipyard. 

Savannah is a great city, it is where I proposed to Vix back in 2002, so has lots of happy memories for us. We will try and take a few photos over the next week to show a little of the area.

As you can see January had the most snowfall since records began, 25 years ago, with 469cm / 15ft of snow, and the forecast calls for another 40 – 50cm over this weekend.

For the last couple of days we have been playing around on skis rather than snowboards. It took a little while to get the hang of it but it was good to try something new. When the powder comes we'll be straight back on boards though. We might put some photos of us skiing on-line when we look as good as the guy in this picture.

Vix and I have enjoyed our time here so much that we have decided to buy a house in Canada. We are in the middle of closing on a house in Squamish which is a small town on the coast halfway between Whistler and Vancouver. To see a little about Squamish have a look at this link.