We Need A Vacation

My two kids, like many, are involved in extracurricular activities.  Vary rare is the day where they just sit around at home watching television or playing video games.  To say that their schedule keeps my wife and I busy is an understatement.  Since we both work fulltime, we not only have to keep our respective business calendars, but coordinate with the kids’ calendars too. 

One of their main activities is competitive tennis.  For those families not indoctrinated in the nuance of junior tennis it may be hard to fully comprehend, but I know there are other sports where such a competitive endeavor requires not only a serious commitment from the child, but also from the family as a whole.  This is the case for our family.  The sacrifices that we must make for them to compete at a high level is not only our immediate family, but also our extended family who do not see us as often as we would all like, because our weekends and holidays are spent traveling from tournament to tournament in cities across the country near and far. 

Shortly after Christmas 2010 (spent at a national tennis tournament in Tucson, Arizona over 1,000 miles from our home), my wife and I began to look at our calendars for the first six months of 2011.  We tried to identify “open” weekends to go to the lake and see family.  It was frustrating.  As we looked towards late spring and summer, it was even worse as that is heavy tennis season with all the major tournaments scheduled.  By the way, there is no “off” season in tennis.  We saw a brief open window at the end of June and early July.  It would, however, mean that my daughter would miss a major tournament in which she did well during the 2010 event.  Missing it this year would cause her national ranking to drop. 

I was conflicted about telling my daughter she could not play, but I decided it was time for us to take a family vacation.  A vacation separate and apart from the stress of a tennis tournament where every day is scheduled around match times, warm up times, eating and going to bed early to start it all over again the next day.  We needed a “real” vacation - a vacation that we would all remember for the rest of our lives.  Suzi and I slept on it and the next morning, early February, I booked flights to and reserved a bareboat charter in THE BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS.  My Quest to Sail continues!

"Let there be (LED) light"

I mean no disrespect to the man (or woman) upstairs; I am just dang proud of a recently completed boat project.  My proudness stems from the fact that I have absolutely no DIY skills.  Here, I replaced all of the old interior incandescent lights and fixtures with new LEDs from Seasense*.  On a 1 to 10 complexity scale, this probably was a 2 or 3, but I was still intimidated.  Also, in addition to a screwdriver, I had to use a drill which really raised the stakes …

The plan was to replace five of these guys:

With five of these guys:

Before:

After:

Needless to say, I am very happy with the result.  The difference in light is HUGE and the clarity of the light just makes the boat feel “cleaner.”  Three of the five lights are white/red combination (two of which are in the v-birth) to help with night vision.  The success of this project has also given me a bit of confidence, so I am already planning the next one.  Stay tuned... 

*Purchased from iboats.com.

What is a Tontine?

A tontine is an investment scheme for raising capital, devised in the 17th century and relatively widespread in the 18th and 19th.  It combines features of a group annuity and a lottery.  Each subscriber pays an agreed sum into the fund, and thereafter receives an annuity.  As members die, their shares devolve to the other participants, and so the value of each annuity increases.  On the death of the last member, the scheme is wound up.  In a variant, which has provided the plot device for most fictional versions, on the death of the penultimate member the capital passes to the last survivor.  See Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tontine.

That, my friends, is the name of our - new to us – sailboat, a 1980 Catalina 30.  Actually, I really like this name and think it rather clever for the right owner (or, more appropriately, joint owners); however, Suzi and I found it a bit depressing and in no way the right name for our boat.  It also makes "early" retirement less appealing.  Ha!  And, from everything that I have read about sailboats, I expect it to be the opposite of an investment strategy ... I think a disinvestment strategy is more likely.  So, we set about coming up with a new name.  After some fun banter, we quite agreeably settled on MoQuila, the name of a restaurant we found and grew fond of while traveling in Boca Raton, FL (fairly easy to surmise what the main ingredient is in the restaurant's drink specialties).  So I designed and then ordered custom vinyl boat lettering from BoatU.S. 

It took Suzi and me the better part of a Saturday to install the lettering (including lots of cussing and a few cocktails), but I am extremely happy with the final outcome.  The following morning we had our renaming ceremony.  It was private affair shared by just the two of us (the kids were not all that excited about waking up early on a Sunday morning).  Without further adieu, I am proud to introduce MoQuila...