February 22, 2009

Dear friends and family,

You last heard from us when we had bought our used 21-foot beach-cruiser sailboat and hunkered down in a Tampa suburb to modify it for our voyage into the Caribbean. We traded money and labor for use of a shop, tools, and camping accommodation in a courtyard surrounded by an odd assembly of fences, roofs, and shops. Neglected chunks of automotive restoration projects and a small family of cockroaches shared this space with us, causing some of you to be concerned that we were living in a junkyard. Well, yeah we were, but we became hardly aware of it over time as we worked every day, all day on our boat. We never took a day off, though there were some good opportunities (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Ginny's Birthday, Valentine's Day). We eschewed holidays as we became increasingly aware that we did not want to linger or spend any more time there than necessary. For details on our refinishing, rowing station, cabin, and stowage/tankage/ballast system projects, see www.seapearlboats.org, then the "Steve's SP mods" link. There will be an update there in a few days detailing our last month's worth of work.

As we said, we worked every day for three months and now these projects are nearly completed. We didn't travel or see much other than run around the Tampa area buying boat-building materials, and of course we shopped at the local grocery store and generally attended to the miscellaneous needs of life like laundry and checking out books from the library. We slept in the back of the truck as usual and cooked in a moldy (the deadly black kind) old travel trailer. It has been a lot of drudgery, and the weather has often been surprisingly cold, so we derived our much needed pleasure from planing planks just so and seeing our epoxy glue-ups cure properly. Many little parts must be held together forever in a very exact manner!

Ultimately our host had problems which strained our relationship with him. Sorry if that is vague! Two days ago we abruptly fled that junkyard in favor of visiting with a friend we had been meaning to meet with for months. Now we are here at the home of the author of the www.seapearlboats.org website, in a suburb of Atlanta. We arrived yesterday and though we raced out of Tampa without stopping until Georgia, our prior host's bad energy seemed to follow. On the freeway coming here a car rear-ended us, but only the truck and trailer were damaged, the boat only a bit scratched up, so no problem! Conditions look excellent here to put the finishing touches on our projects and continue our travels. Our plans are flexible as always, but full of potential for adventure and possibly a brief return to the West Coast before leaving the country (lock up your valubles!).

The latest pictures may only interest you if you like boats. Sorry, we have been rather boring lately! To view the pictures please see http://www.picassaweb.com/ginnygoon/#USAUSAstarting with "Part 4"

Love Always,
Ginny and Steve