On Monday, May 21st, after 9 months of traveling together, the TOWNKIDS are no longer together. Rick and Tanya have many more miles to travel than we do and they had to head on north without us.

We are at the Wild Dunes Yacht Harbor in Isle of Palms, SC. (The Charleston area) We arrived on Friday and will leave the boat here while we fly to California to visit family and attend an important birthday party.

Saying goodbye to our wonderful friends was one of life's most unpleasant experiences. Rick and Tanya have become family to us as we have adventured our way from Gloucester, MA to the Bahamas and back to Charleston together. We met them in Gloucester after talking on the marine radio as we sailed from Nova Scotia to the U.S. the end of last August. We liked them immediately and started traveling together, realizing that our agendas were similar and our boats traveled at the same speed.

Whenever I was having an off day, complaining about the wind, the cold or some other stupid thing, Tanya would tell me to just "Suck it up, Cupcake!". She is the best and bravest of cruisers that I have ever met. Nothing upset her and she never complained like I did.

It was fun having Canadians as best friends as all Canadians get excited when they see another boat with a Canadian flag and do their best to meet each other. And not only that, but Tanya never met a stranger and she also talked to every person she possibly could. That was real handy for Kirby and I - it gave us more friends. It also made us the Token Americans on occasion.

So, after nine months, our agendas are different. We talked to them last night and they were anchored at just south of the North Carolina border - planning to be in North Carolina by the end of today. We miss them terribly.