San Antonio, Texas

A long way from the sea, but we made it OK. Trinda's brother John picked us up right on time even though the plane was 15 minutes early.

It looks to be a big event family reunion, almost 50 people so far! I didn't realize she had that many relatives!

Yesterday, I found the new owners of the company who made our dinghy. They are going to replace it again! And pay shipping to the Marshals!!! Ya hooo! He said that there was a known problem with the glue in the 2006 models and couldn't believe the previous company owner replaced my bad 2006 with another 2006 with the same bad glue problem. He was extremely nice and helpful! Way to go AMI (Advanced Marine Inflatables)

Photos uploaded

I finally got last year's photos uploaded to my site. 5 months of 2008 and some of 2009.
You can see them at http://www.tcls.com/~larryl/log_katielee/photos/
This is a sample. It was raining during the race that Trinda and I went on a friend's boat, Hawkeye. So she is a little damp!.

We are enjoying the grand kids. We stayed with Guy and Amanda (Zoe and Morgan) for almost 2 weeks and now with Wyndi and Steve (Izzy). Off to San Antonio for Trinda's fmily reunion tomorrow morning.

Surprise, surprise! my brother Donnie and our oldest son Gary are planning to show up too! It should be fun.

Seattle and Grandkids

A little slow to update these days. Been busy here.

First, the news. Our daughter-in-law Amanda unexpectedly went into the hospital the day after we arrived. She is out and doing OK, but assighed to bed rest until the baby comes. Trinda is helping Amanda with the kids and keep up with the household chores. Lots of laundry with 6 and 8 year old girls!

I was plying with Zoe, and did face-plant down a flight of stairs. I have a stiff neck and a unique rug-burn allover my forehead. Too old to be rolling down the stairs!

We are trying to find the things we need to take back to the boat, but are making slow progress. We found a simple sewing machine that Trinda wants for dress making. I have been looking into a different way to manage the DVD collection. I may get a small computer just for the movies and copy them all to hard disks.

I still haven't decided what to do about the laptop or the dinghy.

Seattle Arrival

I think we safely arrived in Seattle. No food on the plane and no SLEEP!!! I just can't sleep sitting up.

The agriculture dept of Hawaii confiscated our sandwiches on arrival. Can't have American lunch meat "If it has left the country"! The real flight times were 5 hours in the air to Hawaii and 6 1/3 hours to Seattle. by my watch, we left at 12:30 PM and we arrived at 2 AM

Christmas Dinner Photo

New Years and Yokwe Race

We went to the New Years eve "block party". It seemed like most of Majuro came! We had a beer or two and walked up and down the street a few times. It was only about 3 blocks long, took maybe an hour. Then we sat around on the curb and visited with the other cruisers. We gave up early and went back to the boat about 10:30.

At midnight they started firing off flairs and a few bottle rockets. I guess there were no fireworks available here. One flair, A red parachute type came drifting down really close to the boat. It missed though, by about 20 feet. Gave me just a little pitter-patter in the old thumper. A flair could burn right through the awning and maybe even the deck!

Yesterday the yacht club held their monthly race. We didn't feel like racing "our house", so we volunteered as crew on Hawkeye. We had met John and Linda in Mexico in 2001 and they are on the mooring ball next to us. We had a nice day. John's boat is fast for a smaller boat (38 foot) and he came in second before the handicaps were applied. Then he moved back to 5th. The prizes for the race are donated by the businesses here. Best is a barrel of diesel (about $150) next was a night in the resort and
various T-shirts and caps. They gave 'crew prizes' too. Trinda won 2 tickets to the movie theater! She thought it was the best one!

Today I went to the restaurant to use the WiFi and order our airplane tickets to visit the rest of the family when we get back to the States. It was slow! It took over 4 hours to find the flights and pay for them! We are going to San Antonio for 10 days, the Ranch for a week and stopping in Chicago a few days on the way back to Seattle.

I can't believe the hours I have signed up to be on a plane! 21 hours from here to Seattle, (2 1/2 days back!) plus the 4 flights there.