News from Houston and Preparing for the 2009 Cruising Season

Happy 2009 and greetings from Texas. Time has flown since our return to the States last September. House chores, hurricane repairs, reconnecting with friends and Jan's recuperation from her hand surgery kept us busy throughout the fall. Thanksgiving was quiet with a small dinner with Jan's mom, however Willow Point Drive was once again headquarters for Christmas. At one point 17 relatives were enjoying each others' company. Our daughters Jennifer and Jaime and Jaime's boyfriend Sky flew in from New York and Asheville, Craig's parents, sisters and brother in law came in from Phoenix and Henrietta, Jan's mom was with us and Jan's brother and his family drove in from San Antonio. We all had a great time being together and everyone had a blast with our newest toy - a Wii. If you haven't had the opportunity to play with a Wii, trust us, once you do you will be hooked.

In January we finally decided to put our house of 26 years in Kingwood up for sale. We had been wrestling with the decision for over a year and had finally come to the conclusion that with our nomadic lifestyle we needed a place we could "lock and leave". To our surprise we received an offer the first day the house was on the market was and had two competing offers by the time we were finished. As a result, on February 17th, we closed the sale, loaded the furniture into three PODS and the next day were begging our friends for a place to stay. Our girls say we are now "couch surfing". We haven't made any final decisions on where our new land base will be but for the next 18 months LONE STAR will be our home.

We fly back to France on March 31st and will be on board LONE STAR by April 2nd. We have posted our 2009 proposed Cruising Plan (of course all cruising plans are always subject to change and usually do) and are looking forward to getting started. We have once again become list people as we work to get everything we want to go to the boat ready and take care of all the last minute details in Houston.

We're not sure exactly when we will leave La Rochelle for the Spanish Basque country. We plan to wait until the weather warms up some before we depart and will spend the time provisioning, reacquainting ourselves with the various systems and taking the boat for some shake down sails before we once again slip the lines and head for new adventures. Hopefully this cruising season will be longer and less eventful than the last!