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Jennifer and I are going through what we had hoped never to go through. It may sound silly to some of you but Coach is the only son we have ever had. For the past few weeks we have been in and out of the vet and we found out today that he has a very aggressive malignant cancer.

We have decided to make him as comfortable as possible. The drugs are really making a difference in his standard of living.

In that light we built some really nifty stairs to help coach onto the mothership.

Our first boat guest were Jennifer's parents Ken and Karen. Our first visitors. We had a fun day.

This was our first excursion out of the marina since we arrived. We still have a lot of learning to do. I got the engines running, Jennifer removed the dock lines and I turned the wheel to go. OMFG we forgot to put the engines in the water. Luckily there was no traffic or wind, so I handed the wheel to Jennifer while I cranked the engines into the water. After that, it was an enjoyable day with no further incidents.

My dad and Marian were next up. Marian for some reason refused to get her picture taken. The stairs are good for other broken down dogs than just coach. (We remembered the engines this time!)

Jennifer's brother, sister-in-law, and their kids came for the weekend. We sailed out to redfish island and anchored out for the night. We dinghied to the beach at redfish, did a little fishing, again no catching and spent the night at anchor watching the tankers motor by.

With six people and one dog on board, we took two trips to the island. Of course, the dog couldn't use the boat facilities so I took him to shore first with Lana and Zach. Then I turned around to pick up the remaining three humans. I'm motoring back to the boat, and I hear the kids yelling. Coach is swimming in the water following me. So I quickly gathered my passengers and went back to shore. Coach (cancer and all) made it about 50 percent of the way back to VII C's. Eric and I had to walk out into the water to get him to shore because he was so tired.

On this excursion, everybody was given the opportunity to drive VII C's. Zach was a pro. He drove us out to Redfish with no problems at all.

Lana on the other hand, not so good. During our sail back to the marina, we had Regina (our autohelm) driving, and Lana was sitting at the helm reading her book. Eric, Jennifer and I were on the foredeck enjoying the sail, and all of a sudden we were turned the wrong way. Well apparently, Regina couldn't hold her course, and she was beeping letting us know we needed to do something. Well us on the foredeck could not hear it, and Lana didn't tell anybody about it. We also had let Lana manually drive the boat into the marina, let me just say she needs some more practice.

Eric and Crystal took lots of pictures and promised to e-mail them to me. (nothing so far)