We're back in New Caledonia from our vacation in the States. We had a great 3 weeks there visiting with family and friends.I started out by flying to San Francisco, via New Zealand, with the kids so that Sophie could have a week off on the boat by herself. The kids were awesome and handled the long flights like one big adventure.
Grandma and Grandpa took over the kids. They got intensely spoiled with daily trips to Marine World, various parks, pizza parlors, and toy stores (which has taken weeks to de-program). I got to hang out with friends all day, acting like I was 17 again. 
I spent my time eating at all my old favorite restaurants and touring car dealerships to test-drive all the good cars that have come out since I left.Since spoiling just the kids was not enough, my mom took us all to Monterey for several days. She
took us all shopping and we took the kids to the Aquarium every morning before the crowds flooded the place. Believe it or not, they got a huge kick out of it. Often they would point inside the tank and say to each other, Oh! You remember that time we swam with one of those in the Tuamotus? They got surprised looks from the other kids around them, especially when we were in front of the shark display.
Massimo had his 7th birthday party with his best friend Noah at the park he used to play in every day. The kids loved living a "normal" life, but by the end of it they were ready to go back to the boat.
I got a chance to talk about our trip at a PechaKucha night in San Francisco (www.pechakucha-sf.com). Coincidentally it was held in my old office building at One Market, which brought back a lot of memories–and people. It was a real kick to share our trip with the folks in the audience and I think most were pretty surprised to hear the stories in that context.
We're heading out of Nouméa for a 10 day trip to the Isle of Pines during the kids' school holidays. I'm going to try to do "day-in-the-life" updates to the blog during this trip as an experiment. There'll be no pictures since we're posting via satellite, but hopefully it will give you a taste of what we're up to.
In that spirit: Today the kids woke up at 0630, as usual. Sophie made them breakfast and then had to drive our borrowed car back to our friends' house. In the meantime I have been looking at all the weather websites for the coming week to try to plan our trip. Looks like we'll be OK, with a couple of rainy days at the end of the week. Now we have to do the final preparations on the boat, stow some things away, start the engines to warm them up and head out of our little marina. We'll either head to Tombo Reef for the night (16 nautical miles away), or over to Ile Louen (24 nautical miles), which won't be as nice, but will get us half-way to Ile des Pins, especially with the wind we have today.Time to cast off...
-maurice
