It's been a busy month. We've been pretty lucky with the extra warm weather we got here in Michigan up until this week when the weather finally started moving back to normal. The nice weather let us do crazy things like playing with the jetski and sailing dinghy well into October still enjoying the 80 degree days. Unfortunately it's now the end of October and the weather is now moving back to something more normal and its now time to put the water toys away and getting everything ready for winter.
The Tug was the first to come out. It's now winterized and sitting in a barn which will hopefully keep it warm and protected. I've started taking all of our stuff off of it and begun the long process of getting it cleaned and shined up with hopes of listing it for sale this spring. Unfortunately there is still a lot cleaning and a few small projects to take care of before I can do that which of course include redoing the teak, oiling the wood, lots of scrubbing and polishing trying to get her looking her best for the potential new owners. I've heard the boat market is slow right now so I'm assuming we may get to enjoy her on the Great Lakes much of next summer. I would love to take her up to the North Channel for a month but am not sure how that will workout with Max's schedule and having the other boat that we need to learn to use as well?
In between playing with water toys we have been going to as many of Max's tennis matches as we can this season. It's his Senior year and has been fun seeing how much he has improved from when he started tennis last year.
While we have very much planned for it, it still seems strange to think we will be empty nesters this time next year. I've heard that between birth and the age of 18 is when one gets to spend 80% of time they get with their kids so I'm going to make sure I enjoy it while I can.
On that note we have been continuing our college visits. This month we went to check out Western Michigan University, Michigan State, and Hillsdale. The only schools we have not visited are University of Toledo, Ferris, and Eastern Michigan. Two of those he will do as a field trip in school and with his sister going to Ferris I'm not sure he has much interest in following her footsteps. He has worked hard to get good grades over the years and with some effort during the application process should be able to choose from any of the schools he wants.
At this point he is thinking he wants to be a doctor and is looking at Pre-Med programs. His second thought is something with engineering but he has not found anybody doing fun stuff in the real world that has excited him about that. So we are simply encouraging him to pick a school that offers a lot of choices in majors should he want to make a change after taking a few classes in the subject.
As I write this he is just now starting to fill out a few college applications. It will be interesting to see if he is too late for scholarships and placements has I'm seeing a lot of friends with seniors posting various collage acceptances and scholarships awarded in my Facebook feed recently.
Personally I'm still hoping he will take a break/gap year or more after his first year of school to join us on our circumnavigation. It will be interesting to see where he ends up and what he decides to do?
Annabelle turned 21 a few days ago. She is back doing the Disney College program again this semester working as a lifeguard this time and asked us to come down to celebrate with her by drinking around the world. In Disney speak this means going to Epcot and getting a drink at each of the country's. As it also happens to be their food and wine festival so they have some carts set up for bonus countries as well. She managed to talk us, her grandparents, aunt, and one cousin into joining her for this expedition. I think we ended up having drinks and snacks from 15 different countries by the end of the night. The strangest snack was defiantly the onion cake from Germany. It was a fun way to celebrate and everyone had a good time. We rented a place for a week in Orlando going to the Disney Halloween party, various shows, and spent some time just hanging around the pool for a bit while getting to see Belle when she was not working. It was a good time. Unfortunately Max is still in school and could only join us for a long weekend but it was nice to have both of our kids together even if it was only for a couple days.
As our sail boat is pretty close to Annapolis we decided to attend the annual sailboat show again this year as it's always fun to walk around looking at shinny new sailboats and gear for a few days. One surprise was that a Privilege 510 we looked at last year (and waited too long to make an offer on) was there on display. After getting to see that boat and about a dozen other cats we confirmed that we made a good choice and didn't have any regrets on buying our Xquisite. While there we were able to meet up with three other Xquisite owners to have lunch and chat about experiences and future plans with the boats. From what I can tell it seems most are pretty content sticking to the Bahamas and Caribbean with theirs. We seem to be the odd balls that want to sail around the world but then again three of the four we meet were fairly new to boating and big boats in general. So maybe they will get there and come join us ;).
While at the show we attended an informational session on the World Arc and a cocktail party they had the next night confirming that its probably still the direction we are going to go with when it comes time to circumnavigate. However the Xquisite folks are talking about setting something up soon as well and plan to announce it at the annual owners party this year. I'm looking forward to seeing what their plan is and how much interest they get. Its always better to have choices :)
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