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6/16/2003 11:15:00 PM
Boulder Creek, CA
In the Santa Cruz mountains and the redwood forrest

April/May 2003

We moved in with Fiona and Graham the last weekend of March, Robert had left that Saturday for India and Escrow had closed on April 4th ­ what a day! It was quite emotional ...

Hallo itıs me again,

Well it is Thursday night and even though we are going to watch a movie in a bit I thought I at least should get started on my report, so that I can keep my promise to send you (the English list) the report first. I know the last one was VERY long, intense and for some shocking news, and you are maybe not quite ready to get the next one. Well, the German list has not heard from me in 2 months and many are asking to mail to know what is going on. So letıs start right into it:

We moved in with Fiona and Graham the last weekend of March, Robert had left that Saturday for India and Escrow had closed on April 4th ­ what a day! It was quite emotional, specially since Robert was gone, but I tried to be as upbeat as possible with the kids. We said our good byes by walking through each room saying something that we liked or remembered about it (Robert and I did the same thing on Saturday night before he flew out), then we held hands and ran around the house and garden screaming on the top of our lungs: ³Good by house, good by garden, good by pond, etc.² The kids had so much fun running and shouting which made it so much easier and cleansing for me, I think it was a good closure for all of us ­ one to remember for me for sure, Robert was greatly missed in that activity!

The boys and I moved in with the ³Tooms² (as with many of our friends we ³lovingly² call them by their last name ­ a bit hard with Fiona and Graham since Fiona kept her last name Cameron ­ sorry Fi...) and much to my happiness Robert came home 4 days early from India, since he was able to bale out of the Singapore trip due to the serious state of the SARS virus. The first couple of weeks were nice and quiet, we were back to our normal daily routine without the extra moving work. The boys ­ Sebastian, Oscar and Benjamin ­ had a blast living together, one of us would bring them to school, the other pick them up, they started T-ball together on the same team, basically they spent almost the whole day together (good thing they were in different classrooms to get a bit of a break!). And throughout the whole time ­ almost 10 weeks ­ they did really great, hard to believe but they hardly had any fights, the rules were made in the beginning if they would be arguing too much they would need their own space and they really followed that even though it did not happen too often. We all agreed that it was almost easier to have them together than by themselves, just because they got along so well. The big boys also included Benjamin in most everything and that helped a lot, and since he is one who likes to play by himself sometimes anyways, Sebastian and Oscar got some one on one buddy time.

Robert and I were busy looking at boats and after seeing quite a few during our visit in San Diego (when we brought our belongings to the storage) we thought we had to try again up here in our area.  We had found one that was a bit similar to one in San Diego we liked and thought it would be suitable for us. They were both New Zealand custom built, 42/43 feet, similar layout (although the one here was more narrow and only had a small aft cabin). Anyways we proceeded with an offer, got a boat survey done and wanted to take it on a sea trial. We planned it for a weekend were there was also a big boat show going on in the same town that the boat was at, so Fiona and Graham watched the kids for us and we had a ³real boat weekend² for ourselves.  During the survey we found quite a few things that needed bigger repairs and were disappointed that many of the instruments did not work (the boat was owned by a single guy who had sailed her by himself around the world in 4 years!). Unfortunately the weather did not allow us to go out to sea and with our brokers advice we hoped that maybe the owner would come down with the price, since more things needed to be done. Nevertheless we enjoyed our weekend together, the boat show where we learned and bought quite a few things as well as staying in San Francisco. Well as it turned out he did not agree on a lower price, we both were quite disappointed since we had already made plans for her remodeling, it would have been so convenient to have her right here in the Bay Area,...  So we were back to scratch one, looking for boats.

The last week of April Fiona went to the hospital on Monday to get her gall bladder removed, she had scheduled it during our stay so that I could take care of the kids etc., since one should usually take it easy for a week after. I was able to do that just until Wednesday,  because then I came down with this major flu (we thought) having the body ache, 102 fever and extreme lack of energy. By Thursday Fiona felt good enough to move slowly, drive again and take over, because I was just out of it. I canıt remember when I had been sick the last time and I certainly canıt remember that I ever felt that lousy. All I could do was lay in bed, I did not want to read, talk, or do anything ­ going to the bathroom was an effort. After a doctorıs visit on Friday and being told it is the ³good old influenza², that will last 5-7 days I continued staying in bed and after 7 days of 100-102 fever I went back ­ I had pneumonia! I could not believe it that I had dragged it out that long and was quite happy to take the antibiotics that finally got me better. Then Benjamin came down with this nasty cough and asthma, after a week I also took him to the doctor and surprise, surprise he had pneumonia, luckily it was in itıs first stage and he did not get any fever and got over it very quickly.   During my week in bed, Robert had gone out and searched for boats again but there was not much out there that we had not seen along our coastline. So we went back to the other New Zealand boat that we had looked at in San Diego. It was still available and re-thinking all the facts etc. we made an offer and Robert flew down for the boat survey and sea trial (this time with better weather). Everything looked good, the survey came back with  some repairs, it was definitely better maintained than the other one (also owned by a single guy but he had hardly sailed her the last 3 years)  the draw back was that it had very few but  instruments. We took a couple of days to think about it and soon knew that this was the best and most fitting one for us, so we continued with our offer and were boat owners a week later! Her name is (was ­ but that a little later) Legacy, she was built in 1983 in New Zealand and is 43 feet long. Now the next step was to get her up from San Diego. Robert took the last week of May off, we hired our sailing instructor Dave (who we have somewhat befriended in the meanwhile and consulted for many boat and sailing questions) with whom he would motor-sail her up to Santa Cruz (3-5 days depending on the weather). Well just a week before (while we were house sitting Maura and Bobs place, they were gone off to New Mexico for 2 weeks), Robert all of a sudden felt really lousy, thinking it would be a server allergy attack. and after a few days later his body ache would not go away and he had also a high fever of 102, back to the doctors we went. He got diagnosed with Strep throat, got the antibiotics and we thought for sure he will be better the week later. Well, the fever stayed and he started coughing, having no energy at all (he did not even want to watch a movie, read or do fun stuff on the computer...) and with our trip ahead we thought we better get a second doctorıs opinion.... Well guess, YES he also had pneumonia! After he had been on the stronger antibiotics for 3 days and felt better, not a 100% but good enough to decide he wanted to proceed with our plans to go to San Diego. We drove down early Tuesday morning, Robert and Dave spent the afternoon to check everything that they needed for a save trip and after a nice dinner together with Barbie and my cousins daughter Lara, we (the boys and I) drove to Temecula and Robert had his first night on Legacy!

They had planned to leave next afternoon but ended up to be at the SD harbor until Thursday midday. I in the meanwhile took the boys to Legoland, again with Barbie and Lara, and they had a wonderful time, Sebastian had asked to go back there for such a long time (we went during our vacation October 01) that I thought it would be a nice treat for such a long drive. Thursday we had a quiet day, a few errands to the storage and a nice swim, enough to relax for my trip up back home on Friday by myself... Well about 1/3 up north Robert calls, asking me to ³U-turn² and meet them in Santa Barbara.... They had sailed for 17 hours and since there were no instruments on the boat yet for self steering one had to be at the helm the whole time. With still some lack of energy from the pneumonia, some seasickness and a very bad weather forecast for the Big Sur area (³The Cape of the West Coast) he knew that this would be too much just for the two of them and not wanting to take any risks (specially on his first trip) they decided that the boat would have to be brought up later and stay in Santa Barbara for a few weeks. So I did not have to drive back by myself after all and even though a bit later than expected we got home safely. Dave was nice to put together a crew quickly (Robert could not take off again) and Legacy got into Santa Cruz just a week later. Yes, so the next ³domino piece has fallen over² and things are proceeding as hoped.

Robert is already very busy doing repairs, the boat looks a lot like our construction site 5 years ago and instead of being ³at home² at the Homedepot store we now get to know the West Marine Boating Supply shop... I on the other hand have started to clean it out and get things up so that we can move our few belongings on her in order to live there for good. We will be living in the Santa Cruz harbor at least until October and then start going south to San Diego for a couple weeks before we start down the coast of Mexico.  We have moved out at Fiona and Grahamıs place this weekend and are now staying for a week or so with Maura and Bob hoping that we can get everything ready to feel somewhat comfortable. We will have to haul her out by the end of the month to do some repairs and renew the bottom paint, Robert will be off a week so hopefully things will proceed quite a bit then and we can finally take her out for some weekend sails (once the sails get back from the sail maker, who is resizing them for us).

Like I had mentioned before her name was Legacy but due to some paper work we had to do we also thought we would rename her and stick with our ³Austrian theme² (our house was called a ³Hittın² (hut), our dog is called Broesel (bread crumb). The myth says that if you really want to rename a boat you need to stay with the first letter and do a little ceremony for the gods (Neptun,...) you first have to de-name it, take all the name signs and tags off, pour champagne over her bow (front of the boat) and thank the gods that the boat has been safe the years before. A day later you baptize the boat with itıs new name, again pour champagne over the bow, take it out on the sea and let her go back one boat length asking the gods to keep the vessel and the people on board safe. So what did we name her: LAWUR ­ this is the modified Viennese name for the French word Lavoir, meaning little tub (the wooden or steel ones that in ³old² times bathed children or clothes got washed in).... Yes, go ahead and laugh ­ it only will mean something to you when you are from Vienna.... Since we were busy last weekend (Cathrine had planned a surprise birthday party for Paul, we were 4 couples staying the night at the same hotel, had a fabulous dinner and afterwards lots of fun at a night club!) So therefore we did all of that this weekend together with friends, on Saturday Fiona, Graham, the kids, Maura and Bob as well as our friends Luke and Debra (they live around the corner from the harbor in Santa Cruz!) came and on Sunday Hemma, Christoph and kids joined us ­ it was a lot of fun and I think everybody enjoyed themselves enough to come back...!

So yes, this is the latest there really is not more to tell. I will send some pictures in a separate mail since it might be too big for some to open. We sure hope to hear from some of you What is going on with you during the summer and all the other ³gossips². Stay in touch ­ big hugs from the ³sailers² Niki, Robert and the little pirates

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