To all of you who follow our adventures we want to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2009. Your support and love make that trip even more memorable and we owe it to you all.For the holidays we decided to go back home in Canada where Christmas actually looks like it! For the past month we’ve seen Christmas decorations along the East Coast but for us, who are born in the snow, seeing a Christmas tree just beside a palm tree just doesn’t sound right! Here, since our arrival the temperature has averaged -15°C (5°F) and as I write these lines the snow falls hard and we expect about 20 cm. We will definitively have a white Christmas this year. However, as soon as the holidays are over, we will jump in a plane and fly back to Florida right away. That will be enough snow and cold for this year! We may have been born in the snow but that doesn’t mean we have to endure it forever, no? We haven’t left our jobs, sold our house and everything in it to suffer the snow more than three weeks per year trust me. Looking through the window I think I start missing the dolphins, manatees and pelicans that populate the Waterline Marina where Chocobo is in Florida. Since our arrival, the generosity from everyone has been just overwhelming. As soon as we landed we had Danielle’s father Richard that pick us up at the airport then Danielle’s mother Claudette who lent us her car and cell phone right after we landed! More spoiled than that and you die. The two days we spent in Ottawa were awesome as we met many of our friends for breakfasts, lunches and dinners with us. (We don't think we will eat in a restaurant for at least a month after that though!)
Our resolutions for 2009 are pretty simple; we promise you that we will have fun, tons of fun, and that we will enjoy life plenty on our road in the Caribbean and Central America. We will try, as hard as we can, to share our adventures with you and hope you will dream as much as we do. We’ll return to the boat at the beginning of January at which point we will resupply our provisions and complete the installation of some new pieces of equipment. Before our departure I managed to complete 31 action items out of 46 that are on my list while Danielle worked all this time cleaning the boat and ordering parts.
There are still a few non-critical items I’d like to do before we leave to take advantage of the availability of goods we benefit in the USA. We plan to spend a few days in Miami, cross the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas and then heading south to the Caribbean. Once out of the USA it will be much more difficult to get parts and food prices will increase. If you see pictures of Chocobo in the Bahamas and notice that its sinks a bit more than usual just remember that wine is very heavy and quite cheap in Florida.
