Home schooling at Home, Epicurus on the hardstand.

It's November 2007 and we are enjoying the lovely Sacramento fall weather. Katya and Matthew are making good progress with home school. Home schooling is a lot easier at home than on the boat because it is easy to keep to a fixed schedule every day of the week. There are lots of resources available such as the library, the internet, Wikipedia. We're making the most of these few months to get ahead. Once we're on the boat the pace will change with a lot more focus on learning Spanish, reading and learning about the country and ocean around us.

Epicurus is on the hard in Grenada and has survived through the hurricane season with no serious storms hitting the well protected boatyard. The season is not quite over yet but the chances of a late season hurricane hitting Grenada now are quite low.

We are starting to plan our 2008 trip back to the USA. We hope to get the boat back in the water in January and sail along the coast and islands of South America, arriving back in Florida in June.

Safely anchored at Cape Lookout

We are safely at anchor inside a protected bight at Cape Lookout. We got round Cape Fear OK though the winds were quite strong through the night. We decided to stop here for the night because the weather forecast for tonight and tomorrow is not so good. This is a large anchorage, well protected from the waves in any direction. It is not so well protected from the wind but I think we will be fine and could use a good night's sleep.

We have had one mishap. We had to tack downwind and one time as we jibed the main across we didn't let the sheet run as the boom went across. There must have been a strong gust just then and the boom pulled down on the main and ripped it just below the first reef. We sailed all day today with the main double reefed but still made good progress because the winds were mostly 20 to 25 kts. Tomorrow morning we'll take a closer look at it and see if we can use the sail with one reef in it until Jacksonville/St Augustine where I'll find somewhere to repair it.

Safely docked in Rudee Inlet

We made it safely today out from Willoughby Bay to Rudee Inlet. The winds were strong from the south. We saw one gust to 40kts but most of the time it was between 20 and 30 kts. The wind was just enough offshore that the waves weren't bad but we motor sailed close to the shore from Cape Henry to Virginia Beach. As we were anchoring a nice old gentleman motioned us over to his dock and invited us to tie up for the night as he said the holding was poor due to thick mud so here we are safe. He's lent us his car so the others have gone to the local supermarket for more provisions.

If this works then maybe the radio is fixed.