Thankgsgiving

Comments from Pete and Kellie-- Being from the Pacific Northwest means that our idea of the holidays involves cold and dark days. Yesterday, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner on our boat with Ian and Ally from 'Loon III' and Brian and Marylin from 'Icarian'. It didn't fit the image because we sat in the cockpit having drinks enjoying the afternoon sun. We brought a frozen turkey from San Diego, and pondered about how many people a 10lb turkey would feed. There's no way to call the "Butterball hotline" to ask! We are also limited in our ability to entertain because we only have 4 wine glasses, 4 dinner plates and just so much seating. Eight for dinner was just perfect and we have great leftovers for tonight. We started planning the dinner the day before, and the kids stayed entertained most of the day cutting out construction paper decorations - turkeys, fall colored leaves, corn cobs, etc. It was really neat to see them take part in the preparation. They even cleaned up their room and themselves with little prompting. The last hour before dinner (at 2:30) was agonizing for them... they kept watch across the water to see if either couple looked like they might be getting into their dinghy. We're feeling like we've suddenly "started cruising". The weather has been warmer (the water is still too cold to swim, 63F). The beach around the boat is at least 10 miles long with lots of shells and interesting critters. Dolphins go by the boat a few times a day and there is a sea lion that swims with surprising acrobatics. Pelicans crash into the water like huge lawn darts falling from 30 or 40 feet. Sometimes they splash down only a few feet from the boat, which is startling. We've also shifted from "getting the boat prepared to go" to "maintaining the boat as we go", which is much less stressful. Ian helped replace the cutter stay and that was it for the day, other than rigging up a swing for the kids over the foredeck and eating. His advice is that you shouldn't expect to accomplish more than one thing a day. Things like boat repair projects, shopping for groceries, or preparing the boat for a sail all seem to take much longer than we were thinking they should. We were often trying to cram three or four things into a day and getting frustrated that nothing was getting done. It's difficult to slow down, and accept that that's OK. One of the reasons we wanted to go cruising was to live life at a slower pace than what seemed necessary, or at least normal, back home. It may take awhile to get used to it! Kellie had a nice talk with Lynn on 'Homers Odyssey' about cruising with kids - they'd cruised for 26 months with 9 and 10 year old kids. She had some good advice on how to keep kids entertained onboard, and assured us that we'll get better at it. Today our "task" is to deliver some medical supplies to a fellow in town we'd met last year here - first aid kits for the fishermen. We'll spend midday exploring the other half of the beach, and if the wind looks favorable, we'll head out this evening. There are a couple anchorages between here and Bahia Magdelana. We're going to try more sailing at night and spend the daylight playing on the beach and exploring. It may be awhile before we can check our imagineruising.com e-mail. If you've written to us recently and we haven't responded, don't worry... we'll catch up when we get to La Paz in a week or two. Please do send us your news though, because we really look forward to hearing from everyone.