We Have A Plan!

I love the line in the song, " If you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plan." At the risk of being laughed at by the almighty, in this entry I will relate to you the plan that Kim and I have recently agreed to.

It has once again been over a month since my last entry. The last month has been filled with family activity and news. We have had the rig parked at the ranch in Missouri for the entire month of August. It started out very dry, but the last half of the month has turned very wet. We have accumulated more than 10 inches of rain in the past two weeks. We have also enjoyed some cooler weather. That has been nice at the ranch and at the lake.

Sailing Update: We have continued to sail as much as we can. We have now accumulated over 150 hours of sailing time. We are very comfortable in strong winds and feel ready to take this to the next level. What the next level is will be explained in the plan below. I shot some very bad video during our last sail on August 27. The winds were reported to be 20 knots gusting to 35. It was very exciting and fun. We felt very comfortable and enjoyed the day. At one point we were bashing into 3 foot waves while sailing up wind on the far north end of the lake by the dam. While sailing down wind we hit our all time record speed of 6.5 knots. Not bad for a boat that is speed rated at 5.9 knots.

Check out this video if you would like:

We recently went sailing with some good friends. John and Sherri got to experience everything from strong wind to no wind. We had a nice lunch on the boat and had a fun day.

While we were sailing we saw two A-10 Warthogs flying along the shore of the lake. One of the two, broke off and flew directly over our boat and then waged his wings at us. John got one shot of the airplane, but it was much closer in person.

John also got this cool shot of the sun behind the jib.

We also took Bob and Linda out for a sail. One thing we really like about sailing is the social aspect of the activity.

The other major family event this past month was the Baptism of our granddaughter Eve. They did the ceremony at the river, which made it very fun and special. Michael and Audrey and their boys made it up from Arkansas for the river and party and Brian and Shannon's house afterwards. Here are a few of the many pictures I took.

Michael and Audrey

Will, Connor, Cameron and Amelia playing in he water. 

Eve going under.

Shannon and Brian's Family missing Jake

Michael's family with wet boys.

The other big news in the family is that our youngest son Mark has accepted a job in Boston. He will be working at Children's hospital. He will be implementing the same Cerner system that he has been supporting for the past 18 months while living in Kansas City. The one crazy thing he told us is that he is renting a 500 square foot flat for $1700 per month. It is right by Copley plaza in downtown Boston and withing walking distance of the hospital, but that is crazy.

Ok, now for the plan. We will be leaving Missouri right after Thanksgiving in late November. We will head to Gulfport, Mississippi. We have arranged to charter a 40 foot sailboat for a day of sailing with a charter captain. We want to see if we like open water sailing. We will then head to Orlando for Christmas. Shannon, Brian and Amelia will come down and we will go to Disneyland for a day. We will then head south and visit Everglades NP. I expect that we will be looking at both Marinas and boats along the way. We expect to arrive back in Missouri in April. We will only stay about a month and then head north. North all the way to Alaska. We are expecting to get to Alaska by around June. We plan to stay in Alaska most of the summer of 2019. We expect to return to Missouri by October.
Then we are planning to put our land in Ozark up for sale. When it sells, we will then start the search for our new home on the water. We will just have to see how all of that works out.

This plan is going to take some good luck, so stay tuned to the blog to see how it all goes.