US Land Log 2, Year 2: Missing Cruising
Date: Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
Weather: Hovering Around 30 Degrees Fahrenheit – Beautiful Blue Skies
Latitude: N 41 degrees 34 minutes
Longitude: W 70 degrees 33 minutes
Location: East Falmouth, Massachusetts, USA

We have been having the time of our lives helping Heather and Jed care for
Sam. Sam turned one year old about two months ago and is running all over
the house and getting into everything. He is a handful, and such a happy
kid. He never stops smiling and laughing and giggling. In fact, he never
stops! Not for naps, not overnight. He still sleeps in one to three hour
spurts. But we are working on that. We only hope we can help to get him to
sleep longer before we head back to Windbird in Bundaberg.

Our current plans are to fly out of Boston on May 1st, arriving in Brisbane
the morning of the 3rd. Then a train ride to Bundy, followed by a bus trip
to the Marina. We are getting anxious to get back to cruising and to see
old friends again. However, it was thinking of friends that got me to write
this log. We got a note recently that Bob and Dianna have sold White Swan.
They will be gone when we return. We already knew that Paul and Marie would be gone. And Ross and Laura sold New Dawn so they will be gone. So many friends are ending their cruising in Australia. We left others behind last
year in New Zealand or earlier this year in Fiji. Some will keep cruising, but will simply be taking more time to get around. Some don’t even plan to go on around, but to spend years cruising the islands of the South Pacific. No matter what course they take, we know that for many of the friends we have made, it could be years before we see them again, if in fact we ever do – though we don’t like to think of that possibility. This is the hard part of the cruising life. We feel so lucky to have made so many friends with which we have shared so much, and we will miss them terribly.

Mark got his consulting jobs and they are keeping him busy. And Judy is
reading cruising guides and Lonely Planet guides to start planning our trip
this year. We will leave Bundaberg about the second week of May and begin a rather rapid cruise up the inside of the Great Barrier Reef. We will be rushed as we must be in Darwin by mid-July to join the Sail Indonesia Rally. We plan to spend about three months in Indonesia, stop in Singapore then a couple months in Malaysia and finally a few months in Thailand. The cultural experiences this year will be different than anything we have had before and we are looking forward to them.

Once we return to Australia Judy will begin daily postings to our log once
again. Many of you have said you missed her logs, and we have missed
hearing from many of you. We look forward to cruising once again and to
catching up with our cruising friends and hearing from our land-based
friends. It ought to be a great year.