What a welcome to Edinburgh

Logos Hope is in Edinburgh! What a fantastic experience to sail into our homeport, in the sunshine to a massive welcome.

We had a beautiful, smooth voyage from the Netherlands - leaving early on Monday morning and entering Scottish waters on Tuesday morning. After lunchtime, we started seeing familar sights along the coastline and around 3pm we entered the Forth river estuary.

It was incredible to sail up towards Edinburgh, seeing Arthur's seat and the bridges gradually getting closer.

We had to enter through a lock into the enclosed port area. As we entered the lock, we could see people gathering on the balcony of the shopping mall next to the berth. We could also hear the music floating across the water as we moved towards our berth next to the Royal Yacht Britannia.

It was fantastic to see around 150 people waiting for us with flags and banners. Many of them were friends from our church and Heather's parents were there with a massive banner -Welcome Packwoods. Our friend Colin had organised the welcome event with a bag piper, a band, singers, Scottish Dancers and lots of excited people.

When the ship was alongside the berth, it wasn't long before the side door was open, the ship was cleared, and we were able to get people onboard. It was so great to see everyone onboard in the Cafe on deck 4. A special bonus was having our pastor and his family come onboard. They were leaving early next morning for a holiday in the States. If we had arrived as planned on the Wednesday morning, Wayne would not have been able to visit the ship.

So now the ship is open to the public. We had an official opening this morning with the Lord Provost of Edinburgh ( The Queen's official representative in Scotland) as our guest of honour.

Liam and Kara took part in the Parade of Nations - a very proud moment.

So for the next 2 weeks, we will be spending a lot of time welcoming friends onboard. It is going to be an exciting time.

Edinburgh here we come!!

It is our last day in the Netherlands. We have had 5 weekends here in 2 ports and seen around 23000 people come up the gangways and visit the ship. As a family we have welcomed and hosted many old Doulos friends and really enjoyed the opportunity to connect again with many great people. It is amazing how many of them have come onboard and expressed a desire to get involved with the ship again in the future. These weekends have just been a taste of what we expect next port.
One old friend that has been back onboard many times in Gerard, an award winning photographer here in the Netherlands who was with us on the Doulos. He has taken pictures of many of the families onboard and we are really excited to see the pictures he took of us.
When we can get a decent internet connection, we will upload them for everyone to see.

And now we are getting ready to sail. The last visitor went off the ship and the deck crew have been loading the vans and the gangways.
At 7am the ship will sail out of the harbour to begin the voyage to Edinburgh.
Last week it looked like the weather was going to be really bad and the captain asked us all to pray. Now the forecast is for a lovely day tomorrow and for Tuesday when we arrive in the Forth.
We know there will be a big welcome on the quayside on Tuesday afternoon, prepared mainly by our good friend Colin and our church.
We are so excited. It will be very strange as our 2 worlds collide. The ship is now our home and living onboard feels normal. But when we go back to visit Edinburgh, we return to a different normality but it still feels quite natural.
Now our ship lives are going to come together with our home life. We will sleep and work on the ship but be surrounded by our home town, our friends, our family. It is going to be strange.
But we are so looking forward to it.
We hope to see many of you onboard if you live in Edinburgh or Scotland.
Come and say hi.