We have some really great news to share. Our daughter, Christina and son-in-law, Michael are pregnant! Yea!!!!! The due date is around August 17. This will be our first grandchild so we are so very excited. Both Christina and Michael come from warm, loving families and each family has a long streak of loving adventure, so we know that Baby Boyless has some great genes working for it. We will be in the middle of Indonesia when the birth comes and there just are not any good places there where we can stop and leave Leu Cat for an extended stay. Thus, we will be sailing on the Malaysia and hope to fly to the US to meet the little arrival in November. In the meantime, Christina will have the loving hands of support of Michael’s family, who live just a few miles away, and our daughter Heather, who will be flying in from San Francisco to help just before and shortly after the birth.

I have posted Baby Boyless' first picture. Its face is facing you so if you look closely, you can see its nose and eyes. You need to look closely in the dark portion of the head. You can the nose, the bridge of the nose and the two eyes (the dark portions on both sides of the bridge of the nose). The nose certainly looks like a Leu to me, and you know that I am not bias in the least bit. If you ask me, it also has my tummy, but I am told that all little ones look like this at this stage...
Today, we had a great day. I was able to start and finish making the repairs to our main sail. Each of the 4 holes made by the broken battens was less than the size of a quarter and each was easily repaired. I am still amazed that the local sail loft fellow quoted me $1,200 AU to fix the sail. I am thrilled that I was able to do it as I saved all that money, plus my repairs will last longer than if the sail guy did the work. My trick of using 5200 and sail tape will last the life time of the sail, while the thread used by sail lofts will eventually rot due to sun exposure. I will post before and after pictures so you can see what I did.

While I was sweating away in the hot sun repairing the sail, Mary Margaret was sweating away doing more laundry and then cleaning the inside of the boat. As you can see, following your dream and sailing around the world is not all glamour….

One more thing that made this a great day was that the Cuban cigars I ordered from Hong Kong 4 days ago arrived! They passed through Customs without a hitch, which delights me to no end. I was not sure if they would get hung up in the Customs and then they would assess a very steep duty and Value Added Tax to the cigars. These same cigars cost $410 AU in Brisbane but I only paid $117 US and that included shipping. I plan on order a new box each time a shipment arrives until I am stocked up for this cruising year!