Well deserved treat

Well what a morning, what a day! We are still here in Fort Lauderdale and it looks like we will be staying for another weekend... we just got invited to go camping for the weekend down to the Everglades. Well what I can I say this is another opportunity not to be missed and I will packing our bags once again to leave the boat for a few days. This time it will take us for an airboat ride down in the everglades, frog hunting at night and observing crocodiles in the wild...thats what we call adventure pur.....

After I had a really good day schooling the children yesterday I had a really bad day today. Carlos is giving me, himself and Julia a hard time by not participating. Have to get my trick box out to see how I can make it more fun for him and how I can encourage him to see the good side of learning and school.... what did he say to me today... its so boring and you are a mean old teacher.... wow... what a statement from my six nearly seven year old.

Yes, another week and Carlos is turning seven... I cannot believe how time is racing when you are having fun in life.....after all this I made myself a nice ice coffee with lots of cream and lots of calories....yammi... I believe a well deserved treat!

Rain or Shine

We are still in Fort Lauderdale and over the weekend it has been pouring down with rain. However we still had our fun and even though it has been raining the air temperature is quiet warm and we had so much fun playing in the puddles and later on going for a swim in the nearby pool. I have downloaded a couple of videos on utube that you can have a look at. go to the webpage of utube and search videos under SailJuca... you can see and hear how much fun we had that afternoon.

Afte we were done with playing we made ourselves comfortable in front of the television and watch a couple of family movies in the afternoon.

Later on in the aftenoon we made use out of the wet weather condition and started to cleaned the boat and Carlos had to empty the rain water out of the dinghy before it started to sink.

Saying good bey to River Bend Marina

Good morning, finally we are getting into the final stage of leaving River Bend Marina in Fort Lauderdale. The wooden floor is in and Sven has done a fantastic job on it. My varnish job just needs one more coat and what can I say it looks beautiful. The electric is getting its beauty job today and then we are also settled in this department. Our new water maker is a hit and will provide us with 200 gallons of water in an hour, this will ensure us that we will not run out water on longer sailing journeys or if we are staying longer on one of these beautiful islands to come.....

I am getting very excited and looking forward to our next stage of travelling. I cleaned and tidied the boat yesterday and started with our provisioning. The boat is covered with all kinds of food, body lotions, sun screen lotions and drinks for these lovely evenings out in the cockpit watching the sunrise.

On these pictures you can see Julia and Carlos in their classroom! Julia is having cooking lessons.... the end result was delicious and we all commented on how great her tomato sauce tasted. Julia was very proud of herself.

They both enjoy learning by doing and with our spanish classes we have added some more fun to it.

Home made bread

Yes; we finally started baking our own bread. After weeks of eating white and brown sweet soft bread, we have discovered the solution from IKEA.

First I bought a couple of samples for us to try and then we went to IKEA for a big shop and bought 100 of packets to bake proper brown wholemeal bread, as we know it back from Germany. Sven even said it tastes like the break that we used to eat from our bakery in Preetz, yammi!

We are all happy and enjoying our wholemeal (Schwarzbrot) bread each day.

Taste of the Bahamas

We just have been to the Bahamas for two days. We loved it. We arrived on Monday and after a quick debate whether to rent a car or take a Taxi we quickly decided on a rental car to be more independent. It was a cute little blue egg, just right to explore the island.

So we packed the car and off we went to Nassau.

First I was a bit disappointed, as the township itself is not very pretty and representable, but you get to buy all the very expensive brands. We parked the car and did some sightseeing downtown. We stopped by in a few shops, but most of it were souvenir shops with lots of T-shirts and other nick nags and the rest of the shops were out of our budgets.

Then we walked further and found beautiful churches to look at and a statue of Columbus who discovered the Bahamas in the 14th century. We also found the Bob Marley Retreat, very interesting. After a few hours of sightseeing it was time to look for a place to stay. Carlos and I did not mind to sleep in the car, but Julia was not that keen on it. It took us ages to find something, but mainly because we looked on the wrong side of the island for accommodation. First we went to Paradise Island, here the lowest price for a room started at $495 plus Tax and then we went to the South side of the Bahamas were the local people lived and shopped. Wow, what an eye opener, however we felt pretty safe most of the time.

Finally we found a little hotel, right in the middle of Nassau, it was clean and very friendly and they had a parrot in the lounge which Julia and Carlos was mesmerised by, especially when he copied words of them. We had a restful sleep and were ready the next morning to attack the rest of the Island.

First we went to the beach and enjoyed and relaxed for a while in the sunshine and the warm, blue crystal clear water. The colours of the water were exactly how you find them in the newspaper or brochures, we loved it. After a while we explored the island deeper and discovered some caves, the slave quarters and more beautiful beaches. Then it was time to head back to the Airport. We thoroughly enjoyed our island time and it has shown me what things there are to come when we heading off in a weeks time. Really looking forward to it!!!

Spanish Lessons

Good morning, our boat is a mess and there is no space anywhere to sit, so we have spent all morning in the RIVERBEND MARINA Office working on our computers. As already mentioned we replaced the carpet with beautiful wooden flooring, but it all takes its time. I am nearly ready to install my pieces of Art back into the boat. I have to do one more coat of varnish on the table and doors and drink holder and then this job is done, looks beautiful. I also went to IKEA yesterday, yeah, we had a great meal there for $4.99 and bought lots of little goodies for kitchen, bathroom and I found a great little chest of draws, that fits into the space opposite the engine room.


On my way to IKEA we went pass BORDERS and had to stop there. We spent three hours in this beautiful bookstore and bought great books to read. We also bought a couple of spelling workbooks and a Spanish learning Software program. We were going to buy the ROSETTA STONE program, but had to decide against as it was just not in our budget, so we bought another software program instead for a tenth of the price. The INSTANT IMMERSION Software seems as good and I am really happy with my choice. We have already installed it onto all three laptops and will include a daily Spanish lesson in our school work from today on. Learning Spanish has been one of my mission since I have been a teenager, and now I finally get the opportunity to do it with my children, how wonderful is that.


So there is lots to do for today and our school program for the day is nearly over and I can get on to my other jobs of the day. In this picture you can see me and my best friend Kyoko. This a picture taken back on our last day in New Zealand nearly four months ago and I miss her dearly.


The other day I read a really nice comment from my friend Dee on Facebook and I loved it so much that I would like to quote it on our blog. "Knowledge is only a piece of information until it is absorbed or experience"....... this has explained a question to me that I wondered for years. I do hope that I pass on lots of knowledge to Julia and Carlos, so that they can absorb and experience it for themselves. Once I have supplied them the fertile ground and given them a core knowledge of lots of things they then will in return use this to expand on the field that they are most interested in. That is the plan anyway, and I believe learning Spanish is a good start.

Easter on JUCA in Fort Lauderdale

Happy Easter

Who would have thought that we are still celebrating Easter at the River Bend Marina, well, here we are. However don't even think that Julia and Carlos are missing out on anything. They went to an Easter eggt hunt in a nearby park and were given three big basket full of goddies, so talking about spoiling out children, thank you to the friendly supporter and making Easter another memorable event in Florida.

I have also taken a nice video during our egg hunt, but unfortunately they has been a mistake while I was downloading it, so this has to wait until tommorrow. Apart from all the other excitement we had a pretty good day, Sven painted the last bits of the boat and we went back to the pool again for another swim, even I went for a swim today, it was nice to cool off in this spring heat of Fort Lauderdale. Happy Easter to everyone and a big hug from the four of us.

If you like to see Julias and Carlos Easter Egg hunt live then click on www.youtube.com and look for our videos under "SailJuca"..... wow something new that I have learned.....

Work to be done - all man on deck

Owning a Sailing boat means there is always something to do, like maintaining a big garden. It just seems odd as I am used to work in the garden, but did not think that there would be all this work on such a small amount of space.

However, but like everything else in life its the perception of meaning what is often a challenge. The whole world is our classroom and life in general are our daily lessons; best of all I love it most of the time ( when I get it ;))

Julia and Carlos are very much involved in this daily learning and living at the present moment and as ususal I am very proud of my children, they go along and loving every minute of it. Here and there we do have the odd moments were there is moaning, escpicially Carlos, and dislikement, but most of all we are all in it for the fun, excitement and adventure. Here we are ripping our carpet out, to replace it with a beautiful looking varnish wooden floor.

While Sven is painting, I decided to strip paint the doors and our table... great job....
if you ever get bored that is the kind of work you want to attack ;) In the beginning Sven made me sandpaper it by hand, but once we got our hands on a sandpaper machine Julia and Carlos were keen to help....

Right at the present moment we had to get the boat out of the water, because as we were installing our new Watermaker, we can now make 200 gallons of water per hour, we discovered than one of the through holes was loose, so that needed to get fixed that the boat would not take any water during the next passage. While the water was out of the water we decidded to paint the haul, so something we do not have to do in the next couple of years, does make sense :)

A couple of weeks ago we started to dismantle our lamps inside our boat to polish them, just for fun, unfortunately this has turned out to be a real mission and we are still polishing.....

Disney World - we have survived it

Wow, now we can say we have been there, we have done it - Disney World in Orlando!

What have we got out of it - swollen feet and sore legs....

What have we learned - if you do not want to loose your children or loved ones wear the same colour shirts -

we also learned to pick the right days ( not spring break and three days before Easter) - learn the right tricks of how not to waste your time waiting in queues

We waited for nearly 1 1/2 hours to have a picture taken with Ariel the Mermaid, it was all over in 10 seconds :)) besides the excitement of loosing Carlos during the waiting time.... it tought us a lot of patient.....

Did we have fun....... Well in the beginning I was wondering what the definition for fun was... I haven't seen so many people in one spot, we had to wait for hours to get to enjoy the one minutes rides.

Well lets start at the beginning. I visualise that Disney World would be busy, and so we got up early to be there at nine of o'clock sharp, when the door would open. We arrived in time, 9 o'clock and I could not believe my eyes, hundreds, if not thousands of people were already flogging through the gates..... oh my goodness..... never mind we got on the Mono rail pretty quickly and without any problems. we got greeted by the Mickey Mouse Parade and the sight of the castle was amazing. Julia and Carlos were really excited as well as overwhelmed by it all.

Then we tried our luck with the first rides, the waiting time was ridiculous, it took us just a couple of hours to get onto the fastpass tickets, by the time we got our first fast pass, our first ride was scheduled at 4.30 in the afternoon...... however we managed to do a few other things in between and the waiting time was well worth it.. we went on the Buzz Lightyear Spin..... that was fun and we managed to do it for a second time at 7.30 at night.

We spent all day; the exact time 16hours; at Disney World. At 12.30 am ( in the morning) the children were saying they could do no more, they would like to go home.... so we wasted half an hour of fun..... but I have to say, by the time we got to the car (1 am) we were all truly done. I snuggled the kids up in their blankets and Carlos asked me for a a snack and his eyes were closed before the snack could touch is mouth :) ........

The kids were fast asleep by the time I went onto the motorway and I managed for another couple of hours and the first chance I had I pulled over and fell asleep behind the wheel.

Beeing part of the Fort Lauderdale Community

Today is Saturday and we had another fantastic day in Fort Lauderdale. the weather has been very kind ot us and we are all enjoying it and getting heaps of things done. Julia, Carlos and me are very active and discovering more and more of the Fort Lauderdale community.

After we had spent a very lovely evening at Nicks and Jackies house and got to know their family, we went to watch Sophies basketball game at the nearby gymnasium. Carlos loved it very much and got very enthusiastic about basketball, very much to my delight as I was playing basketball when I was a young girl :)

After spending lots of hours on our favourite playground; we have now discovered the local community swimming pool. the entrance is free and just have a look at the pictures and guess for yourself, whether Julia and Carlos are having a great time here.

This morning the community of the Croissant Park had organised a easter egg hunt for the children of the surrounding neighbourhoods. What a laugh and we all had lots of fun, afterwards we spent our afternoon again in the pools, we love it. Today we have brought our snorkelling gear to practice swimming and snorkelling with flippers and snorkel and mask, it went really well.