SAILING KOKORO

I promised that I would update you as soon as we were confident our future plans were finalised and so here we go: We are moving to Dubai! We had been waiting to hear from Emirates, the process has been ongoing since the end of last year. Jeroen had applied when he heard they were hiring, he was still working for SAS at the time, and we began dreaming of a possible future in the desert oasis. I certainly began thinking about it, visualizing a life there, and no doubt the kids did too.  It must have been a stressful time for Jeroen because its possible that the kids and I talking about Dubai as if it was a done deal was likely a lot of pressure for him to cope with on top of his own wishes to have a secure job and be flying to incredible destinations once more. And so it was, with much trepidation, that when the call arrived and we actually had confirmation that he would be part of the Emirates team, trained up to fly the A380, we were all overjoyed.  Sasha shed tears! I mean, ...

  Our story on CNBC - we had a pretty cool write up done about our journey since leaving Hong Kong, you can read that in a separate window by clicking the link in blue.  People ask how that came about and I honestly think if you are open to sharing your story, stuff like this always has a way of finding you. Everyone loves a good story, right? I look at the dates of my last blog entry and I see it was back in August last year! Wow, has it been that long? I honestly thought I had made at least one little entry at some point, but I guess not. Sometimes I feel like we aren't doing a whole lot and so what is the point on updating people about the mundane act of living a life day to day in a small town or a medium sized city. Living on land can have its beauty but the greatest challenge is not succumbing to the monotony of the daily grind. You wake, you school/work, you cook meals, you clean up, you watch your screen, you shower, you do laundry, you clean up some more...and then y...

Well, last I updated we had engine problems.  Nearly 6 weeks since I last updated this blog so I will do my best to fill you in on what we have been up to since we last tied up to the dock in Agios Nikolaos, Crete.  We have been living in a house up in the mountains accessible from the southern coast of Crete. Its an hour and fifteen minute drive from where we now have the boat on the hard in the Marina at Agios Nikolaos.  We had the boat looked at, the engine flushed of the seawater, the problem established and the solution plotted out. That much took us a matter of two weeks. The remainder of the time was spent waiting on the insurance company to get back to us with approval for what we have been quoted as being an 18,000 Euro job, not including the money we have already put into pulling the boat out the water and for paying up for a year in the marina.  Guess what? We finally heard back from the insurance and they have said they will not be paying for the engine o...

 I sit down to write today and I don't know where to start.  I am a ball of nerves, raw in every way, exhausted from having to think the simplest thought and yet I am putting every bit of what remains into slowly packing things away, throwing things away, earmarking things to be put in its rightful place as we prep the boat for leaving her on the hard for anywhere between nine to twelve months! Long story short, our engine has failed, we are now in the process of assessing what is wrong before we go about assessing how we get that righted.  Let me try to start somewhere that could be considered a beginning.  My brother came to Chania, Crete to spend time with us as we anchored in a beautiful and sheltered bay off Marathi beach. He had a wonderful short visit with us and then left two days later. Our goal was to leave shortly after he flew out to Athens. We always check to see the engine is good to go before we depart anywhere, this entails turning it on, running it f...

  We are in Chania, Crete at the moment. We got here on the 27th of June in preparation for my brother getting here to see us. My brother flew from Singapore to Athens, stored his baggage at the airport in Athens before boarding a plane to Chania with just his backpack, swim trunks and roaming Wifi device.  My brother got here on the 30th and he stayed with us for two nights before leaving for Athens on the 2nd of July. It was after he left that we decided to run the engine just to make sure everything was good, plus, running the engine charges the batteries some. The last time we'd run the engine was just a day or so before my brother arrived, when we moved our anchorage to a little bit further out so we were in deeper water as we knew the winds would be picking up and being in 3-5 meters on the depth gauge was a bit too close for comfort for a boat that has a 2.3 meter keel. Well, short story long, when we turned the ignition, there was a slight hiccup of a sound and nothing...