Quiet = Busy!

It's been quiet in Blogland - and as usual, that means we have been crazy-busy.  So what's been going down around here?

These guys are ALL OVER the island!

1.  We spent 8 days in St. Thomas!  If you follow us on Facebook, you already know this.  If not - we had a fantastic time.  The USVI's feel very homey to both of us.  We can't wait to visit by boat!

My previous Galley

2. We closed on the condo!  Yep.  We are officially homeless.  Ok, not really.  We still have the 3 rentals.  And of course Luna Sea.  But one of those rentals is also under contract and should close by the end of the month!  We have one more that we are getting ready to prep for sale (if I can ever get that renter out...) We will initially be keeping the 3rd rental.  If all goes well, we will use that income for our base living expenses once we one day set sail.

Family Photo

3. Family time!  One of my sisters, Stacey, flew in from Spain.  I picked her up in Atlanta the day after Christmas and schlepped her over to Birmingham so that we could visit with family.  This is the first photo of all four of us with our mom in ages.  No, seriously.  AGE. ES.

See?!?  It's been AGES since we were all together in one
family photo!

Another sister, Beth, and her twins who drove in from Oklahoma to visit, caravanned down to Savannah from Birmingham with us.

Betherine - the Hoopmeister

You know somebody was going to do it...

They stayed for the week.  It was so much fun to all be in Savannah playing together!  All six of us stayed on the boat.  We've never had that many people crammed into our 300 sq ft of Luna Sea before...  We mostly just hung out, and then headed out to anchor New Year's Eve.  We spent the afternoon hooping on the beach at Wassaw Island, and then headed over to a new-to-us anchorage for the night.  We had an almost 360 degree view of fire works from 9pm to midnight.  We all had a hard time staying up to midnight.  In fact, Mark called it quits at 10pm.  The rest of us stuck it out until about 12:01am, and then crashed.   We spent the night back and forth between playing games and sitting out watching the fireworks. It was a really fun way to end the year.  

6 of us on board for almost a week...

Teaching Alex to drive the boat.  Man, can two 15 yr olds eat!

Making sure the dinghy didn't get away.

We had so much fun hooping on the beach!  I wish we had more photos, but we were too busy learning new tricks.  

My dad showed up yesterday.  We've lived in Savannah for 18 years and he's never been here.  Seriously.  I see him once every few/several years and we chat on the phone a handful of times a year.  So it was great to have him come check out the boat and visit with me and Stacey.  He was headed back up to Birmingham for a visit, so I tossed Stacey in the truck with him this morning to save me a 7-hour-one-way drive to take her back to the family.  I hate when she leaves, as she very rarely makes it back to the states.  So I'm just pretending that she headed back to Birmingham and am ignoring the fact that she'll be back on a plane to Spain next week.  Denial is healthy, right?

My dad, on the boat.  Always elusive - even in photos.

4. Cleaning. The. Boat!  This morning is the first morning I've been alone since before we headed to St. Thomas mid-December.  I'm am a fairly solitary person, so I've been soaking up my quiet morning!  Now it's time to stash the remaining clutter that built up after weeks of travel/guests and officially moving out of the condo.  It will be nice to get back into a manageable routine and back on track toward our sailing goals.  I will also add Finishing the Dodger/Enclosure here.  I have to finish binding the aft/back screen panel, add the zipper opening to the middle window of the dodger and add the snaps to attach everything hard to the boat.  And replace a strap that I tried, but it's not rigid enough.  Oh well, as always, there's a learning curve!

5. Catching up on blog posts.  I'm spending my quiet morning catching up on blog posts while learning to use my new laptop.  I've been researching MacBooks and finally committed to an Air.  I'm really liking it, but the switch from Windows, which I'm so efficient with, is interesting.  From what I've read, the Mac's are heartier, which I need on the boat.  The size is amazing for toting around, which I will certainly be doing from port to port, in search of wifi, one day.  The security of them will also be important due to all of the open/unsecured wifi I will likely be using...  And finally iMovie!  I'm starting to play around with making videos.  Don't expect them to pop up anytime soon.  I don't imagine I will have time to do much with them until we actually leave.  Or maybe once the real estate is all sold and I don't have to fiddle with cleaning/selling etc.  There's a lot of work that goes into blogs - especially with video.  But I'm starting to film things and play with editing.  So it will happen.  Eventually.

Now we are off to watch Star Wars and visit the laundry mat.  Ahhh, the exotic boat life!