First Day of School!

Just like the kids back home, school started the day after labour day. Graham is studying grade 8 math, language, science, arts and social studies. We are trying to figure out the french. So far, things have been going pretty well, though we have run into some snags like not having a microscope for science! We walked in to the library in Deale to see what they had in the way of books and online and got some good resources from the librarian there. I'm sure we'll be fine. Graham sometimes finds it difficult to be away from his pals, but I expect that once we get to the islands, there will be lots of liveaboard kids to make friends with. He is learning a ton about sailing, fixing stuff (constantly), fishing and life in general!

Clare is busy with her school work too - but mostly keeps it to herself - which is lucky for us, since we probably couldn't help her with it anyway! She did a cool experiment with bananas and yeast, which were left to do what they do for about a week - I haven't read the report on that one! We are still trying to figure out how to get her grade 10 french too, for some reason, the independent learning centre doesn't seem to offer it.

We try to do school work in the morning to leave the afternoon open for whatever grabs us, but that doesn't always work out! It's important to be flexible! And field trips are important, so we are planning one to Washington DC soon!

Solomon's Island

Larry and Pete (sadly, Lu couldn't come too - we missed seeing you!!) arrived back on Thursday afternoon, and we headed out on Friday morning for a terrific sail to Solomon's Island. It is about 25 nautical miles from Deale, and it was perfect weather and wind! We arrived there around 5 or 6 pm and motored around to find the perfect anchoring spot. We settled on this little bay with quite a few other boats. The water was quite clean there, and there were lots of fish jumping etc. We didn't even see any jellyfish! There was quite a party going on where several boats had rafted up together, and we wondered if we would be up all night. But things broke up early, never fear! Some of the folks even went swimming, which was the first time we'd seen people swim this summer. (Well, heard, actually, it was about 10 pm).

The morning dawned still and absolutely beautiful. It was the perfect time for Larry to test out his mast climbing skills, to fix a broken line. It was only the mizzen mast he climbed, and only about 1/2 way, but it sure looked high to me! Now that he knows how to work the climber thing, he will be ready to go up the main mast to fix several things (light bulbs, antenas etc)

We had to head back to Deale fairly early as Pete was heading home in the wee hours of Sunday morning. The wind had changed and strenthened from the north east and we were facing an upwind slog all the way back. We had a bit of excitement when our motor died suddenly, as we were on our way up a channel, heading toward a shallows....We put the mainsail up, and struggled along while Larry changed a clogged fuel filter. All was well, though for sure we were all a bit anxious! We ended up motor-sailing most of the way home because of the wind, and the fact that Star Shadow doesn't sail upwind very well...it would have taken forever! We had the rails in the water a few times and Graham had his legs dangling in the water (again, no jellyfish) and he reported that the water was gorgeous!

We had a fun dinner out at Petie Green's (our fav restaurant, yummy crab chowder!) with Pete, and Rick (from "Grins") who had helped fix the electricl problems earlier. Pete put the top of his Sebring convertible down and we could really enjoy the night! We said a sad goodbye to him, and hope that he and Lu will come see us sometime during the winter when we're beach bound.

With Pete gone, we are now totally car-less, and dependent on the kindness of, if not strangers, then fellow live-aboards for a ride into town for milk, mail whatever. It is a weird feeling!

The Labour Day weekend was fabulous weather wise, and although we didn't go out again after Pete left, we did lounge by the pool for the last 2 days it was open. Clare made friends with the lifeguard, Ashley, and we didn't see her till the pool closed at 8 pm! Ashley is a nice girl, who is just starting college in Virginia. She told us she had auditioned for American Idol and spent most of last week going through the preliminaries. She got to the last draft before what you see on tv, and she "choked", she said she was so tired she couldn't continue...there's always next year!