|
|
Wednesday, April 16th, Marmaris, Turkey
Stepping foot onboard
Zia after a 24 hour travel day and almost five months
away, I felt a surge of happiness burst through the haze
of exhaustion and sadness that had crept up on me in the
days leading up to our departure from Annapolis.
We filled up our time away from Zia with two weeks
exploring Istanbul, two and a half weeks visiting
Washington State, five days in New Mexico, eight days in
San Francisco and three and a half months back in our
home town of Annapolis with a weekend jaunt to New York
thrown in. We feel extremely
privileged to have the family, friends and resources to
be able to put together a winter plan that enabled us to
spend quality time with so many of the people that are
important in our lives. Saying good-bye gets
harder, but the reunions are more joyous as
our appreciation for them grows the longer we are away.
.JPG)
.JPG)
Cassie and Juliana both
excelled in their classrooms at Mayo Elementary School.
It was comforting for Joe and me to have third party
validation of the effectiveness of our home schooling
efforts over the past three years. A certain amount
of worry will persist as the material increases in
difficulty, but so far so good. Neither child
experienced any significant issues reintegrating into a
large group of their peers. Their classmates
welcomed them with a certain amount of curiosity.
There were a few regrets about not being part of the
"popular" crowd, but these were minor issues. They
spent a huge amount of time with "their best friend"
Holly and expanded the threesome to include Ainsley,
Hailey and Geneva in varying combinations. We took
ice skating lessons, went skiing and sledding, had sleepovers and movie nights. They welcomed the normalcy
of all of these activities with heart warming glee.
There is a certain benefit in depriving ourselves of
the simple pleasures in life. We are so easily
pleased when we experience them again.
.JPG)
Noticeable also was my
more relaxed approach to day to day life. Without
the stress of a fulltime job, and the pressure to take
care of everything else in my remaining free time, I was
able to relax and laugh at myself when I picked the
wrong line at the grocery store, as usual, rather than
going into a silent rage. I found myself, I
kid you not, driving much closer to the speed limit on a
much more frequent basis. When the kids wanted me
to take them ice skating after school, I actually said
yes - repeatedly. I volunteered in my kids'
classrooms at school. We hosted mid-week dinner
parties for our working friends. Although a more
stressful lifestyle is probably much better when it
comes to fitting into my jeans, I reveled in the
decadence of having so much free time in a setting with
so many good friends.
.JPG)
Even so, the time
seemed to fly by so the need to say goodbye snuck up on
us rather unexpectedly. Although we did
get to see most of our friends, we missed out on seeing
some with whom we had really hoped to connect. On
Zia, we'll get back into our email mode and hopefully
maintain those friendships regardless. One thing
keeps manifesting itself as we continue to pursue this
nomadic lifestyle: Friendships constitute a vital
component of our lives even when - especially when - we
are far away.
.JPG)
Joe and I enjoyed
different aspects of our visit home. Joe loved
being able to watch the nitty gritty detail of the
presidential primaries. He lived and breathed
CSPAN and NPR. I have a more cynical outlook on
the whole process and was very happy to have him boil it
down into the condensed version for me. I spent
time catching up on the new music scene and working on my
music library. When Joe and I drove together, we
fought over talk radio versus music.
Joe's big winter
project was to start up a business to sell the wireless
signal detection package that he created for us on Zia.
He's just waiting on a few pieces to fall into place but
you can check it out within the next couple of weeks at
www.5milewifi.com.
Keep your fingers crossed that it takes off. A
little income would go a long way towards enabling us to
keep up this cruising lifestyle!
Joe came back to the
boat on March 28th in order to work on a few projects
and oversee a few more. Zia survived her time "on
the hard," as they call it when the boat is stored out
of the water, quite well. Joe applied fresh
anti-fouling paint to the bottom of the hulls to prevent
barnacles and moss growing on them and slowing us down.
He had the engines checked out and a few issues with
them repaired. We got a new waterproof bimini to
cover the cockpit area where we spend so much of our
time hanging out. This will be a huge upgrade for
us. He permanently mounted our wifi antenna so we
don't have to raise and lower it up the flag halyard
every time we change locations. These and a few
dozen other little projects and Zia is ready to go
cruising!
My big winter project
was to help Betsy get packed up and moved out of the
house she so generously rented to us. I was able
to tackle it at my own pace whenever I had a free moment
and that worked wonderfully for me. I kept busy
and felt useful at the same time. Bruce and Alison
(Betsy is Alison's mom) were the leads on this project.
We succeeded in getting the place packed, cleaned and
rented and moving Betsy into her new apartment in
Annapolis so that it was mostly ready for her by the
time she moved back from Florida a few weeks ago.
The girls and I spent
our last 10 days in Annapolis as guests of the Cunard
family since we had to vacate our rental house.
Cassie, Juliana and Holly were in heaven, with
guaranteed play dates every day after school. Sam
and Kari played big brother and sister, taking them to
the corner store for candy and giving them makeovers.
Bruce and Alison made us all feel completely welcome and
comfortable. We worked hard not to overstay our
welcome, preparing meals for the family and trying not
to get in the way too much. We are counting the
days until we can return the hospitality by hosting them
on Zia.
.JPG)
.JPG)
Back in Marmaris, we
are reunited with Hobie who spent the winter onboard
Alexina.
Peter, Helen and Tiger gave him a wonderful, loving home
for the five months we were away. They grew to
love him as he did them. We will be forever
grateful.
.jpg)
The pace has been
pretty fast ever since we returned. Boat projects
continue. Unpacking and restocking the boat is
mostly completed. A few new gadgets have been
installed, including internet connections for two out of
four of our computers. The other two will get
connected as soon as we have the time to tackle the
wiring job. We've met some new friends and
reconnected with old ones. Cenou is still on the
hard, expecting to "get splashed" on Friday.
Cassie and Celine and Juliana and Anouk have paired up
and spend most of their days either holed up in one of
their cabins or running around the boatyard.
A large group of boats
here are gearing up to join the
EMYR. This
group rally through Turkey, Northern Cyprus, Syria,
Lebanon, Israel and Egypt will be logistically
challenging but well worth the trouble. The
opportunity to explore this area of the Mediterranean is
a once in a lifetime experience for most of us. We
anticipate cruising "off the beaten track" with great
delight. Our friends Larson and Gav who spent two
weeks with us in Sardegna and Corsica last year, will be
joining us for most of the EMYR trip. They arrive
on May 15th in Antalya, Turkey and depart on June 15th
from Cairo, Egypt. What a way to spend your summer
vacation from college!
I apologize for doing
such a poor job of updating and emailing over the
winter. I hope you will forgive me. I
promise to get back into the swing of it now that I am
home. We will be traveling through an immensely
important historical region from many different
perspectives. I've been reading up a bit on Middle
East history and culture so I can incorporate some of
what I learn into my updates and hopefully keep you
interested. I'll also post a photo page that
covers the past five months. So, stay tuned......
Next Entry >>>>>>>>>>
Many thanks to our friend Craig Homenko for his assistance in setting up the website.
We also would like
to thank our buddy Scott Brunner who has been kind
enough to host the website on his server.
|
|
|
|
