new tactics to get off land...

So, in this lousy market, where houses in our price range do not move... one has to be creative. Either drop the price by about 70,000 or put a bathroom in the upstairs master bedroom.... apparently potential homeowners these days perfer to crap right next to where they sleep. Oh well, whatever gets the job done. We have a boat waiting fro us in Vancouver and we need to make this house move.

Meanwhile, Juliet and Chris are enjoying home sweet home on the Zodiac and Megan begins college this winter... Justine is finishing senior year at Nova and Trent is busy with coaching baseball next spring and carting Kairen around to various basketball and football practices. Dane is perfoming in Seattle and Sasha is totally freaked out by a missing roof...

Life on quasi-water is pretty good so far.

More quality time with the family

...we're still "homeless", if you discount that we've been onboard a 127' schooner in Bellingham for the last 83 days. Wow- that's quite a while!

The kids all love sailing on Zodiac and we are already spending more time together- better times- than when we had a house in the city.

I can't begin to guess what it will be like, exactly, when we move onto the 63' boat for good... but if this is any indication of family time than I am thinking we made the right move.

Our future home?

We found this 63' pilothouse patrol boat in Richmond BC two weeks ago. She was converted decades ago so aside from some cosmetic touch-ups and a new skylight in the forward stateroom, she is ready to move aboard. We put in an offer and the owner has accepted pending the sale of our house.

...hoping now that the housing market doesnt take another nose dive in the next three months!

sweating the small stuff right now.

The sitting-here-in-limbo phase of the transitioning process is sort of getting on my nerves right now... What to keep and what to store and what to get rid of. Where to put things once we actually move forward... a little chaos is a good thing but I'd settle for a tad bit of control right now.

I walked into Juliet's room and was overwhelmed with the amount of stuff a ten year old can cram into a small amount of space- and it will get smaller. I became overwhelmed rather quickly and just walked back into the hallway... couldn't process it right then.

...and Dogs. Gotta figure out about the dogs.

I think I shall just have a beer and work on it later. Whew.

Boats and Folks

Zodiac Crew

Finding the Zodiac last year was a major sep in our transition to becoming a water-based family unit. Our family spent over 2 1/2 months in the San Juans and Gulf Islands as volunteer crew aboard the 160' schooner. Juliet learned to navigate and handle lines at ten years old. Her favorite sailing station is handling the parrel beads when raising sails. Justine, a junior in high school was able to crew aboard the Canadian Gulf Islands & Victoria BC cruise. As a sea scout she picked up the routine quickly. Even Dane, our 20 year old urban-ite was bitten by the tall ship sailing bug. We are now involved with the winter refit while she is docked in Lake Union. We anticipate another great season on the water aboard the Zodiac and our sailboat Sugaree.

Sugaree's sun on forward cabin