Hello again from the Marshall Islands.

We celebrated our first Thanksgiving ever aboard Love Song this year, giving special thanks for our health (and hip hip hurrah to our nutritionist sister in law for her expertise in optimizing health), the luxury of this lifestyle to blow with the wind one way or another, for keeping the big girl intact and afloat, and for being able to SKYPE with our families back home. We can't imagine sailing around like this without the link of the internet to reunite us ocassionally. We have been back here for nearly a month after a late start from Fiji to rebuild the transmission, and as you'll read further down, we are so thankful to be here in one piece, boat included! We also had a great Veteran's Day weekend, celebrating with some US Army personnel as well as a very interesting young man from the CDC, all here to combat the dengue outbreak. We invited them out to Eneko for the day onboard Love Song, and despite a steady drizzle, they snorkeled and made a great day out of it. Such a pleasure hosting them!

Majuro has welcomed us back to the daily grind, which is getting to be a real shocker the more time off is taken in between! We're fortunate to find work abroad when we know thre are so many people without jobs. We had thought this would be the year to go west from Fiji, but we had reached a cut off point on the bank account that declared go back to work. We realized it's prudent to have an emergency reserve since God is our only insurance and reassurance, although we were tempted to throw even more caution to the wind and take it down to the last penny just to see what would happen! So, working we are! If we start feeling sorry for ourselves, which seems like every other day, we know we are once again testing life's continuous lesson to love one another and to learn to be content wherever we are!

It's really strange that the work that has landed in my lap happens to be PE related, the subject I majored in another lifetime ago! I was invited to help in the professional development of the PE teacher at Majuro Cooperative School and create a PE curriculum. Work for me presents the problem of what to do with the boys though, but the principal and second grade teacher graciously allowed Morgan into class, and Wyatt enrolled with our favorite Fijian, Ms. Mere, in Kindergarten. This is supposed to be a three week contract, with the bonus being their participation in the Holiday Show. They're singing these cute little jingles, and the bummer for me is that I can't get the jingles out of my head! I have also applied for a job as the Coordinator of PE, Recreation, and Sports at College of the Marshall Islands, so if that job becomes a reality then I supposed home schooling will be shelved for the time being and the boys would continue at Coop. Time will tell! The thought of full time in a world of academia is rather intimidating, and makes me yearn for a marina, a car, and a mall without students to distract myself...

Morgan is thrilled to be back with his classmates, although he has trouble getting out of bed in the morning. Riding to school is old hat to him by now, and it's an entire family caravan, like keeping our little ducks in a row, for Allen to bring up the rear while I weave our family around traffic, puddles, dogs, and pedestrians. He's paired up to sing and dance with Iris for the Holiday Show, the same tall, skinny girl who he had to dance with in Kindergarten and whom he thinks despises him. He's informed us that he no longer has a yearning for his horse tail braided former flame, Hindi Indian Bharati, but adores little Taiwanese Catherine "with her perfect little face and haircut". One new friend in the fleet, an American boy age 6 from a catamaran, picked them up 5 minutes after we sailed in on Halloween and they trick or treated around the anchorages. They've made friends with three amazing girls who are here with their parents adopting a Marshallese baby brother, who will soon return home to Missouri for Christmas. Morgan also fell off the stern rail recently and cracked his forehead on the fiberglass, not literally but it was quite a whack, although his embarrassment was bigger than his bruise. We were grateful it didn't require anything more than ice, TLC, and arnica. He and Wyatt play well together, so full of laughter and silly business, and we are so thankful that they have each other.

Wyatt has always had to keep up with the big boys, and now he really is a big boy. He's reading, counting money, and needs a bigger bicycle! He makes up all kinds of songs, games like"Poisoner" (whatever that is?!), and declares he would rather be homeschooling. He falls instantly and deeply asleep every night, but for the first time in his life since they watched a rediculous "scary" movie called SHARKTOPUS with some little Fijian friends (they had permission to watch Free Willy), sometimes if he awakens during the night he crawls into bed with us. It was a long haul over the last 3 months trying to get them both over the fear of the dark and the water itself from that one lousy Japanese horror film!!! My darling boy also occasionally becomes what Morgan calls "a pimple station" with heat rashes, swim rashes, or reactions to sunscreen, so we try to scrub well and keep our hands off our faces as well as out of our mouths and noses! They were given a two season set of Gilligan's Island CD's last summer, and they LOVE it sooo much. It's pretty weird to have it on the TV knowing Allen and I watched it when we were kids. Unfortunately that song gets stuck in our heads too and the boys seem to sing it endlessly.

Allen has been back at work for Martin Daly, the Australian surf charter businessman, in between making repairs on Love Song from the passage and some heavy preventative maintenance! He's considereing going back to the skies in order to really put some dough away, but the immediate goal is to get us a little farther west next spring. So far he has refurbished the twin outboard motors on Martin's 24' power cat which is tied along side us. That's made it convenient for him to cross over the lifelines back and forth to get tools and water, or holler for any of his many assistants to get it for him! He will be fixing the power box to the wind turbine he installed last season, as the overzealous backhoe crew mangled the wiring and box in their attempts to resurface the flooded parking lot/driveway along the shoreline. OOPS! We were offered to Med moor (stern tie) to the shoreline and use the power of the wind turbine while the big boats are out on charter, but we are afraid to risk rats onboard (we've had them before) and would lose the cool breeze which is definitely necessary in 87 degrees and 100 percent humidity!

Sometimes it seems wetter than ever but we appreciate the full tanks of rainwater for plenty of baths for the boys, showers, laundry, or even bathing the dogs. Dallas must be part pig, because every time she swims ashore she rolls in the mud and gravel, much to our chagrin. For a labrador she still acts like she's dying if she's in the rain, but the little desert pixie, Dulce, prances through it happily. They've been pretty footsore on beach days!

As far as the trip north from Fiji back to the RMI went, it was really the very best so far in terms of weather actually. We didn't have a drop of rain in almost 1,800 miles until we got just outside of Majuro atoll! Entering Calalin pass at Majuro was such a deluge it was obviously the sky weeping with joy over our return!! One major detail during the passage that was rather interesing though is included here from the sailmail during passage.

"I had just mentioned yesterday in a moment of boredom that if we ever get back to Mexico someday (as in we'd like to get there sooner than later) that we really ought to take the entire rig down (as in the mast) and clean her up inside and out, as Love Song is 30 years old now. So what happens this morning on the last 5 minutes of my 1230-0530 watch? I had just written in the log book and done a regular visual sweep of the horizon in the faint hint of dawn, sat back down and started to read to finish a chapter in my book. TWANG, THUMP, I jumped up and standing on my tippy toes looked out the cockpit roof over the cabin top and noticed the inner shrouds on the starboard side with the ancient BOSE speaker and the ratlines was hanging all cockeyed. WHAT? I had no idea the implications...but figured it couldn't be good. I whipped around and yelled down the aft stateroom companionway to Allen, "GET UP! Allen! ALLEN, (Whistled)" no response. I grabbed the beach towel covering the hatch and balled it up and threw it down on him. That woke him up! Wyatt kept sleeping (he was on the berth across the cabin). "The shrouds have failed! GET OUT HERE!" and he was up.

We quickly furled the jib, then I started the engine and he went to drop the main. I could not believe my eyes, that with each wave, and there was a lot of them, as in never ending, that the base of the mast was lifting up off the deck and just as quick setting back down again. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. HOLY COW. My adrenalin was really flowing now. Once we got the main down and we were going directly into the wind and waves, bashing almost Southeast, Allen figured that he was going to have to climb up to the first spreaders and loop some line around it to jury rig it some halyards through it and hopefully keep it from going over. I insisted on getting Morgan out of his cabin and putting him in the aft cabin with Wyatt, thinking that if the mast went over I didn't want it affecting my ability to get to the forward cabin. I got him dumped into my bed and now Allen was ready to go out.

He wasn't clipped in and when I asked him to he said he really didn't want to be clipped in up there where 1. he needed to be able to get out of the way if the mast crashed onto the deck and 2. that he didn't want to be clipped to the rig if it went overboard and sank! OK! So, there he went, up onto the brand new piled up mainsail (Dear Lord, we plead your mercy and ask that you keep that stick upright and give my husband sticky gecko toes) to loop a rope around the mast below the spreaders and contain the spinnaker halyard and a spare through it. He climbed back down as I stood by the man overboard button. (Thank you Lord for watching over us and keeping us safe, and while you're at it could you please lend us a few extra angels to hold that thing up while my husband has to climb around securing it?). I am thinking, what is it about being offshore from Tarawa that people suffer mast failures? Our friends on Brickhouse had been dismasted several months ago in this vicinity. I remember hearing stories of the dismasting of another pilot friend and didn't really want to join that club.

So, jury rig one was complete and Allen went to work with blocks and the preventers, deciding that more obviously was needed. That meant he'd have to go up again. This time he tells me that I can come out on deck and help him. GREAT. Now two of us are on deck, but I clipped in. He told me that in an emergency you didn't have to be clipped in. Well I didn't want to become one more part of the emergency, so I stayed clipped on. Up he went again and I realized that my prayers were filled with old hymns and songs, and wanted to yell at the sea, "PEACE, BE STILL!" while my hubby's up there! I'm also thinking who needs this?!

Down he comes again, and we manage to eliminate 80 percent of the wobble. One last attempt he says, with these spare lines to pull it forward using the downed shrouds themselves. (OK Lord, this is it, he needs your super strength, This is the Day, this is the day that the Lord has made, that the Lord has made, I will rejoice, I will rejoice and be glad in it, and be glad in it. WHAT?!) and he drops back to the deck a few seconds later, totally spent, dripping sweat, and shaking. DONE! That's as good as it's gonna get we think, so now to decide on our course..."

We ended up motoring about 200 more miles and stopping in Tarawa, where we had stopped 2 years ago en route to the RMI and toured the WWII bunkers and Vickers' gun sites around the atoll. It was actually nice to revisit the place, which we decided is neat as a pin in most places (compared to Majuro, which with the election and dengue has had a clean up campaign), and the people are so friendly and smile so brightly. It made finding out about 3 yachts that had just departed from Tarawa after being ripped off a serious bummer. At check out there they also decided to implement a dusty rule that nobody knew anything about, which was to charge us $25.00 a night for anchoring (which adds up to more in a month than a luxury slip w/ self pumping station and glorious bathrooms in San Diego's green Sun Harbor Marina!!!). Luckily we were only paying 3 nights...

So, one more adventure under our belts, and certainly many more to come. It's almost like coming home being back here for our third tour, seeing old friends and making new ones. We hope you weren't waiting on pins and needles waiting to hear from us. We wish you all the best as you head into deep winter in your neck of the woods and we would love to hear from you and see your pictures! As always, thank you for your thoughts and prayers!

For any one who may be interested in writing, we are back in the USPS system:

The Simis's S/V Love Song, Yacht in Transit General delivery Majuro, MH 96960

With love from Kathy, Allen, Morgan, Wyatt, Dallas and Dulce