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.



Thursday, March 29, 2012

A Community gets together

Usually events like that only happen on Television, this time it happened in Mangawhai. What a great community to be part of!
What a reward to know at the end of the day to have done something that has been of great help! We all learn it when we are young to share and care for others, but in our busy lives we miss these little things that might create a big difference to someone else. Roger and Kyoko Gayford have been living in the Mangawhai community with their children Marine and Dylan for as long as I can remember. They always have an open heart and I only know them as caring, loving and sharing their time with others. A few years ago Roger, known as Tich has been diagnosed with cancer, but thanks to Kyoko has been very well until recently. They have just finished building their home and it has become harder for Tich to do the hard physical work. Every time I went up to visit my friends I looked at their garden and surrounding and thought to myself, how could we help them. The answer came, when another friend ask me, what we could do to get them back on track, me immediate response was…let’s do a Garden Makeover, just like the one they have on television. Kyokos birthday was just coming up, so the timing was perfect, to create more than a “great” birthday gift. I called a few friends and we started to make arrangement for a Mangawhai Garden Makeover. We started to collect plants and newspaper and I made sure that the ground works was done before the “Garden crew” arrived on the 24th of March. Each day the number of plants in my garden grew, more and more people were willing to help on Saturday. On the day Tich’s and Kyoko’s garden was buzzing with 25 adults and roughly 10 children. Everyone had a either a spade, mower or weed cutter in his hand and who didn’t was busy planting plant that had been thoroughly laid out by Nicki from “All season Landscape”. A finished touch with two loads of Bark was supplied by Jo and Rob from “Mangawhai Transport”. What a surprise when Kyoko came home that day! They were no words, only tears and smiles to be shared. The garden looked stunning and we were now ready to celebrate our “Mangawhai Garden Makeover” achievement as well as Kyoko’s birthday.
Happy birthday Kyoko and all the best to you Tich. We hope that you will enjoy your new garden and that it will give you strength and energy to get better soon! We love you guys and we are all proud of our “Mangahwai community” and happy to share our love and care with others.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Living situation - Limbo!

We have been in New Zealand for four month and we are still not fully settled in. I find it much harder to settle back into the system as getting out of the system.
What has been happening in our life. The children have more or less settled into their new routine and have nearly completed their first term in public school. Another couple of weeks and we are up for our first school Holidays...Yeah!!! A few times I have heard, especially from Carlos who could not wait to get back to school, if I would consider homeschooling him again. I believe him and his teacher are not hitting off that well. I am carefully watching the space and events, but have to say, since my homeshcooling days I am much more sensitive and critically in regards of the education of my children. Julia is very lucky this time round and is continue to blossom. She absolute adores her teacher and I blieve this is on mutual ground. Her teacher is very nurtering for Julia and encourages Julia very much to get more and more involved in her own leraning. Excellent, could not ask for more!
Sven and I are still searching for the right property to settle down. We had a few doors closed on us, but you know us, we never give up. However it is hard to comunicate our process at the moment as it changes with the day if not hour. One day we are buying a dairy farm, the next ad dry stock farm, next minute we are buying property as an investment, the next minute we are moving to Australia or Abu Dhabi. You can tell that we are trying to be flexible, but it is also very exhausting and sometimes I have got a hard time to keep up with all the changes. At this minutes we are settling in Mangawhai...is that what I want....I am not too sure about that. In the meantime I continue to teach my 5 yoga classes in the community and I have just been offered a job as a Teacher Learning Support. I have accepted and started on Monday. I am a translater for a little German girl helping her to improve her english while sitting at school, playing with other children and listening to the instructions from the teacher. It is a pleasant job and I hope that this might open another door for me.
Sven is trying hard to find something to do and just the other day he had a brilliant idea... we will see where this will lead to and I am going to write more about this next time I am here on this page.....so please watch this space as things are happening and I will share them with you........