Welcome on aboard SV/ JUCA

Our philosophy is to live in peace and harmony with each other and to have lots of fun doing it! We practice compassion and unconditional love and experience that there are no mistakes only stepping stones while we grow on our journey.



We have sold our house in August 2009 and moved from Mangawhai / New Zealand to Norfolk/Virginia to board our Sailing Vessel Juca in January 2010.



Juca is the name of our beautiful 60 foot Morgan, and the name is a creation of the first initials of our amazing inspiriations, Julia and Carlos.



I hope you all will enjoy reading our blog and following our travels around the Caribbean.



Monday, January 31, 2011

Well deserved break



After a week of hard work, today is our plan to have no plan and totally relaxation is our keyword for the day! After a tea and a chat on SV Nanuk Sven is playing with Carlos putting his Lego Truck together and Julia and I join Mrs. Turtle for a swim. we haven't done anything all day today apart from swimming, drinking lots of cups of teas and relaxing.
While Julia and Carlos went snorkeling they found a computer lying on the bottom of the oecan. Sven got it out for them and would you believe it, it was a pretty new apple computer, but as you can probably imagine it did not work anymore ....what a shame !! While Julia and Carlos both investigated the computer a couple stopped and started chatting to me. They saw Sven retrieving the computer from the bottom of the ocean and Julia and Carlos sitting on the swim platform and they were kind of waiting for the scream and raving.... but were surprised and started wondering how calm Sven brought the computer back on board.... I then told them that this is how we keep our computer clean...no just kidding..luckily this was not our computer that dropped over board, but it must have belonged to someone and I bet that someone was not a happy person on that day !

Sunday, January 30, 2011

We keep on sailing...

At least for now we will keep on sailing for a while..... the guy from Tauranga, New Zealand came and had a good look and chatted to Sven all afternoon and then he went again. We are going to take him out sailing on Tuesday, hoping that we can get him hooked on sailing the Carribbean. I am very exhausted from this last week and need to have an early night.....sorry if I cannot write any other news at this present moment...I keep you posted as soon as we know more details or a yes or no, but for now we have to keep waiting and practicing patience....... OUIIHHHH we love that lesson!
I have just booked my ticket for the Yoga therapy conference ... I am going to spend a few days in New York City to deepen my knowledge about Yoga....I am sooooo looking forward to it.....

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Ready for the big day....


The last week has been a very interesting one. In amongst all that work we still have found time to have fun and do some exercise. Its amazing we came here to Trellis Bay to celebrate Julia's birthday and the full moon and we end up staying here much longer as intended and again meeting lots of nice and interesting people. We have a very nice evening with Kenny and Sarah from SV "Loon" and meeting up again with Christine and Klaus from Germany. We meet Hobs and Diana in the "Moonloose Goose" bar and restaurant and Hobs comes over the next morning and lets us try out his paddle board. That was so much fun. Even Carlos has made a new friend, his name is Rayne and he is very nice. Hi is eight years old and Carlos and him getting along like house on fire. Rayne has got a sleepover tonight which is very special for Carlos, since we mainly have met girls so far. I don't know how that happens, but all of a sudden I do find myself teaching Yoga on the beach with a bunch of very friendly woman. The first morning I had four people turning up and the second day the word got around and there are seven people in the class. I love those moments of opportunities and mornings sharing my passion with other people. However now its nearly all done and there are just a few tiny little jobs left over before we met Roger from New Zealand at lunch time....... This will be the moment that might our direction in life......we are all very excited and all looking forward to tomorrow to see if Roger likes our boat or not and whether he wants to buy it or not.....so cross your fingers for us.......I will post the news (good or bad) tomorrow, as soon as we know more....For today I am going to bed.....very tired and exhausted....

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Playing, Planning and Pursuit



Sorry I haven't updated our blog for a few days, but as you can see on the pictures we have been fairly busy with cleaning, maintaining and polishing our boat. Julia and Carlos have been helping us cleaning and polishing, but also have been very busy with their school work. They are doing really good and working much more independent now then when we first started. I am very proud of them.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Maintenance and Polishing JUCA

Today we have to get started working seriously on JUCA in regards of maintenance, polishing and beautification . We have got someone coming to have a look at our boat beginning of next week.
While I am writing this, the song of Womack & Womack is in my head "Teardrops " in my eyes......

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Just another day



Another day in the BVI's.
We are still in Trellis Bay and I have been up for a couple of hours and my whole family is still sleeping. Look at my sleeping angels.......

Waky, Waky ... Mummy has prepared breakfast and its time to get up and plan our day.




The plan today ended up to have no plan.....worked on our Dreamboard for the year 2011 as well as our keyword for the Year... we did our school work...went for a swim and later on in the afternoon we went for a a walk and treated us all to an Snickers Ice cream....yum yum!

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Catching up on School time














We had the last three days off school, so I put my foot down and we had an extra long school session this morning. The rest of the day we spend puzzling, swimming and chilling out. Not much more to report on board of JUCA ..... so just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Friday, January 21, 2011

A relaxing day on Beef Island


This morning we decided to stay a day longer to explore and relax on Beef Island for another day. In the morning the weather turned bad, lots of rain and wind and JUCA turned around its own anchor. After watching it for a while we decided to lift the anchor and moved onto a mooring for a calm day and night. Just around lunch time the clouds lifted and the sun came out. I updated our blog and cleaned up the boat and Sven dropped Julia and Carlos off at the beach so that they could play with other children. Once the chores were done we all went to the beach for a swim, a play and a walk; the kids and I treated ourselves with an Ice cream and Sven enjoyed a hot cup of Coffee, had his feet up and let everything else be. We all had a wonderful time and before we knew it it was time to go back to the boat for dinner, roasted Marshmallows for dessert and we all settled down for an early night.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Happy Birthday Julia - Birthday Party under Palm Trees


Wow...Julia is nine today and we celebrate this big event with our friends from "Starry night".
Last night was late and we did not get into bed way past midnight. We all had a little snack back on the boat and then we dropped into bed. Of course we all had a sleep in the next day and it gave me enough time to bake the birthday cake in the morning. Julia had wished for Chocolate Brownie. I made an extra big portion to make sure we would have enough, as she had invited a few people for her birthday. When our birthday girl finally woke up, we had a special breakfast. She ordered scrambled eggs and bacon so her wish was my command that morning. While we had breakfast we heard a few times “Happy Birthday Julia” as some of our friends were leaving the anchorage. We sang Happy Birthday for her again before her first guests arrived; Amanda and Alyssa with her parents. The children played and we chatted a bit before we had our first piece of cake, yummy as usual. Thereafter they watched the new movie “Tangled”, had Pizza for lunch and later on we took the children to the beach. We all went snorkeling, a swim and play on the beach. I have to admit we were all a bit tired and we just let the day slip by, however I believe Julia was happy and had a marvelous day with her friend Amanda. She looks very proud of the fact that she is now a nine year old, and as Carlos reminded her friendly with nine you have got lots more responsibilities, like doing the dishes more often and growing bigger in size! It’s funny when the” little” brother is telling that to his “big” sister. At five we went back to the boat and I prepared our dinner. We had asked Bob and Jamey with their children to join, I prepared a Chicken Curry and for dessert we had Raspberry pie with Cool Whip…delicious. After “Starry Night” left Lise and John joined us for an evening drink. Lise had brought Julia a beautiful little coconut handbag and a bracelet, very precious…thank you! I have to say I am very proud of Julia, she did not get any presents of us this year and she did not blink with an eye about that, all she wanted to be with her friend Amanda and spend some quality time with her, Alyssa and Carlos on the beach. Amanda and Alyssa had made Julia a little birthday card and collected some shells for her on the beach, very thoughtful. Thank you so much Lise and John, Amanda and the rest of the crew of “Starry Night” for being part of Julia’s ninth birthday memory!

Full Moonshine Party at Trellis Bay

We had a beautiful trip over to Road Town and then heading towards Trellis Bay. The sun was shining and the wind was once again coming from the direction we were heading. Once we came around the corner of Beef Island we could already see the masses of boats squeezed into the little bay. It was obvious that a few more people wanted to celebrate the Full Moon here. Coming from a pretty remote place like Norman Island, this was just like …..whoouuuuu. …. What is going on here! We looked for an anchorage and found one, thinking that we would be fairly alone, but oh no…. anchoring along charter boats…there is no such thing then considering a certain space around your yacht just for swinging in the tide. Before we knew it boats were anchored right, left and center. It felt like the parking lot at Pak’ n Safe (Supermarket in NZ) a day before Christmas  Once we had set our anchor, settled down with some lunch and said hello to our friends “Starry Night” the harbor police came along and told us that we had to move because we were lying with our stern on the airport landing strip….ok… we lifted the anchor, with us 10 more people had to move and the race for another anchorage started. We found one on the other side of the harbor, set the anchor and watched JUCA settling down. Again we drew attention to the nice harbor police, this time we were lying too close with our stern in the harbor entrance…. Second time that evening we lifted our anchor. Now we were running out of time, the moon was slowly coming up and the light disappeared as we tried to lift up the anchor……nothing happened….there was no way the anchor would come up. Luckily Kenny and his sailing partner Sarah gave us a hand. He had this awesome bucket where you could see what was going on the ground and he also had a hand held depth measuring instrument. Well he was telling Sven, that the anchor chain had itself tangled up under a commercial concrete mixer that you towed behind a car. Great….. while I was standing behind the rudder waiting for further instructions, Sven jumped into the water to inspect the mess. It took us quite a while to undo the anchor chain, but finally we got loose and lifted our anchor. As you can probably imagine by now the anchorage of Trellis Bay was full to the max. Kenny suggested anchoring right in front of his boat, which we did and then we were finally settling down and ready to go to the beach to join into the celebration of the Full Moon. What a party….. what a night! Julia and Carlos had lots of other children to play with and the party was very family orientated. They had set up a buffet on the beach, organized a bonfire on the water, bands were playing, people on stilts and fire juggler. We stayed right to the end and greeted Julia’s 9th Birthday with singing “Happy Birthday” in the Dinghy while driving back to our yacht. That night we met up with so many people again that we had met during our time in Norman Island.
It was great to see you all and thanks; Lisall and John from “Mobility”, Kenny and Sarah from “LOON”, Amy and Jeff “About time” and of course Bob and Jamey from “Starry Night” for joining us and making this a memorable night.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Goodbye Norman Island











On our last afternoon (18.1.2011) we went for another walk along the Island. We spend a couple of hours on the beach just enjoying our time as a family…..these are the moments I love best. I cannot believe it, we have been here for 19 days, and this has been the most wonderful Island to spend time at, it felt like being on holiday. In actual fact this is how I had visualized our sailing trip all along….finding these beautiful beaches and Bays surrounded by blue crystal clear water and having a wonderful time exploring the Island to its fullest. Well I can truly say this is what we have done here on Norman Island. We went snorkeling, a few times hiking, enjoying Yoga every morning on top of the Island, meeting interesting people, making new friends, relaxing, swimming and just being happy. What a wonderful time we had and I will always remember Norman Island. However it is time to say goodbye to this place as there are more wonderful Islands to explore. Our plan is to motor over to Road Town to do some shopping and to pick up a new speed paddle for our Juca. Once we have done our shopping we are heading towards Trellis Bay. In Trellis Bay we are going to meet up with our friends from SV “Starry Night” and planning to celebrate the Full Moonshine party and Julia’s birthday together. Julia and Carlos are really excited to meet up with Amanda and Alyssa again, as they all get on very well with each other. However it will be also saying goodbye to them as they will be heading back to Maine via Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and Bahamas and we will be sailing into the opposite direction towards St. Martin