and here we sit in Trinidad

The kids and I are sitting in an airport in Trinidad, waiting for our flight home to Canada. We are all over the top excited. Amelia asked if we were going to blog over the summer on our trip across Canada. I think we might just take a hiatus and pick up again when we get back to our around the world sailing trip. We will be back to Grenada in September and sailing again by October.

I think it was a really good thing to be able to come down and get a taste of the sailing life before leaving for three years. It is definitely nothing like any of us imagined. It is strange to have a dream, a goal, a plan and then to move into the execution part and have it be different than you had visualized. Graham and I finally had a few minutes early yesterday morning to have a really good talk about the boat, the journey, the next three years. I will be honest the talk had highs and lows. Graham brought me back to the dream though. The dream was to spend time with our kids while they are still young and to experience new things. Doesn't matter if the boat leaks when it rains or our flooring isn't the prettiest, or if mizzen mast won't unfurl, we are and have achieved this dream.

We are going to have our challenges. We realize, very clearly now, that this life is definitely a working holiday. It seems you are constantly moving and doing. To go from sitting in a cubicle all day in front of a computer, to grabbing lines, scrubbing decks, navigating, sailing, it was just so totally strange. We also all realized that the missing of friends and family was more intense than we had imagined it would be. We have tried to overcome this by making fast friends along the way. Good people everywhere. On day 1, we met the nicest sailing people, Kerry and Hillary. They are from Calgary and their daughter is on the Canadian bobsled team. We all took to them right away (especially Amelia) and we enjoyed seeing them. We also met a fellow named Chris from Whistler, sailing solo. Super nice fellow, that we all had a good time getting to know. It was so nice to see him pull into a port and we felt like a long time friend had just arrived. The blog also helped us feel like you guys were all along with us. It felt good to log on and see your comments and emails. We all enjoyed reading them as a family.

I guess the long and short of it is....we are excited about coming home to Canada but we are also excited about picking up where we left off in September and having many more sailing adventures together as a family...and of course sharing them with you.

See you all soon

Julie