Today is the start of our ninth year of cruising. Wow! We can hardly believe it. It seems just like yesterday that we moved on board Leu Cat for the first time. Time sure flies when you are having fun.

To put this in perspective, we have now lived on Leu Cat longer than every other house but one. When we first got married, back in 1971, we were still in university at Ann Arbor. We lived there for 4 years. Then we moved on to Newark, Delaware where I got my Ph.D. and Mary Margaret finished her masters at U of Penn., commuting each day to Philadelphia. Between classes and then work we managed to have three wonderful kids while living there. We lived there just under 9 years. In January 1984 we moved to Sacramento, California and lived there just under 5 years. We then moved to Lake Forest, California and lived there from late 1988 to early 2000. This was the house where we lived the longest as we watched our kids grow up and have two of them move away as they went to university. Our last house was in Dana Point, California, where we lived for just short of 8 years. This was going to be our last house as it was so beautiful and was overlooking the ocean with a view to die for. Alas, it was not to be. Once our son moved off to university, the cruising bug bit us both and we started planning for that lifestyle. The big difference between living on Leu Cat from our other houses is that with Leu Cat we have literally sailed around the world. What a great life!

We returned to Leu Cat late last night after flying all day. We left San Clemente, California, where we had been staying with our dear friend, Robin, for the last few days, at 0200. After driving to LAX we then flew to Miami where we changed planes for our fight to Grenada. We landed in Grenada around 2030, rented a car and drove to Prickly Bay where good ol’ Leu Cat was patiently waiting for us. By the time we schlepped our luggage on board, unpacked, and crawled into bed, it was 2330. We were bushed!

Needless to say, today was a day of rest as we tried to recuperate from our long flights here. Well, that actually is not totally correct. Mary Margaret did get our laundry to the laundry mat here and I took the car and did a little shopping to start the process of refilling our refrigerators and freezers with foodstuffs. Not too exciting of a day but at least we are back on board. Yea!