Today's excitement centered on video Skyping our two girls, Heather and Christina, seeing our two grandkids, Isaac and Stella, and our son-in-law, Michael and his brother Nate. Heather and Nate flew into Tucson from San Francisco and Denver, respectively, to help out Christina with her new born, Stella. One of the things that amaze us is that we have great Internet just about everywhere we go here in the Maldives. Here we are in the middle of the Indian Ocean and we are Skyping halfway around the world because of this wonderful access to the Internet. It will be different in a couple of weeks when we head south to the Chagos where we feel we may not even have access to SailMail.

We learned that Heather and her boyfriend and Nate and his girlfriend are both in the process of buying houses. They are so excited and we share their excitement. After the horrible house debacle of a few years ago in the US, now is a very good time to buy a house as the prices are reasonable and the mortgage rates are under 5%.

Christina and Stella are both doing great and Michael and Isaac are enjoying having a new addition to their household. Everyone is happy and doing well, for which we are thankful.

Today was a mostly cloudy day so instead of snorkeling the reefs near us we decided it was time to clean the hulls of Leu Cat. She has been in the water now since mid-January and a film of scum was starting to coat the hulls along with a few small barnacles that somehow attached themselves onto the antifoul. It was easy to remove and the hulls are once again looking great.

Tomorrow we call our son David Paul and his fiancé', Allison, to discussing wedding plans. They have set the date for April 18th of next year. It will be a destination wedding located in Yosemite National Park. We have attended a wedding about 15 years ago at the lodge where their wedding will be held and the location was beautiful.