Hi Everyone!

How time flies when you are enjoying yourself!

 Which is Don’s sarcastic remark on each of our wedding anniversary's! The month has flown by though and I suddenly remember a newsletter that hasn’t been written:

We don’t realize when we are busy with charter “work” just how much we become caught up in the hurly burly of land-life and its people, till the season changes and we find ourselves once again pitting our wits against the elements and living with nature on our own. This is really what cruising is all about.
The sea is all-encompassing. Living on a medium that seethes with movement and moods is interesting to say the least. Even at anchor behind our little island, the swells swing around the corner with the South Westerlies that blow and we wobble and bump – but get our smug kicks out of watching the monohulls pitch and roll. We’ve had our share of early morning wake-up calls already with the Sumatra winds that scare the living daylights out of us. They are so unexpected, that one minute there is hardly a movement of air and the next minute all hell breaks loose. The rigging begins to sing and whip and its all systems go with a mad dash for the stairs and into the cockpit to grab at cushions and washing and such like being pummeled by 40 knot winds. We are nicely dug in but it’s always a worry with other boats nearby that are unsuspecting and not well enough anchored into the poor holding ground.
Nevertheless there is something about this time of the year that is totally magical.
One half of us says get out and go cruising and the other weighs us down and says stop and smell the roses. How can one not marvel at the colors of the early mornings and evenings? We laze back in the cockpit inventing images in blazing clouds – old men tea-drinking and nattering (check the photo) dragons and elephants. Huge splooshes of rain pummel the sea in jumping dollops with pink early morning mists. And today after 2 days of torrential downpours – the waterfalls; cascades falling from the top of the mountain that flanks the rain forest behind the beach.
Oh and the rainbows! They send their huge colored arches way across the sky. No need to look for the pot of gold. We have it.

Right here on Katrine.

I was reminded this morning of how easy it is to be searching for something and miss what’s sitting right under one’s nose.
Before the sun has risen and just when the hornbills in the sea shore jungle begin their cacophony, my early morning routine is to dinghy over to the dock inside the marina and walk all the way around the edge to the beach overlooking the little bay where Katrine is anchored. (see the photo) I count the boats Julie…just like you do; then spend time watching the sea otters, scavenging for fish and stealing from the fishermen’s net – tee hee. Their antics are just so cute, diving down to collect a fish, rolling onto their backs with their catch clutched to their tummies as they chomp away. There is a family of 11 – Mom and Dad and the kids who constantly squabble. But for the last three mornings the otters have stayed away. I have noticed a pack of wild dogs that have probably picked up their scent and chased them away for a while. So this morning when I arrived at the far end of the beach and hadn’t seen my friends I felt let down. Until I looked up at the mountain and its pinkness in the morning sunrise -a spectacular sight. And as I sat on a rock gazing out over the ocean on one side and to the little islands on the other, I saw kingfishers and wonder of wonder a whole family of dusky-leaf monkeys. They remind me of the orang-utan apes with their long arms and slow movements and of golliwogs (politically incorrect now?) with their black bodies and white rings around their eyes. They are herbivorous so never make a nuisance of themselves, and at this time of the year they have a bevy of babies in tow – bright orange!

It’s time for lots of boat chores and Don has been busy servicing engines and fixing dinghies and such like.
We have a great commission for a magazine to write and photograph things pertaining to food on board - which we have called “Katrine Cuisine” and we have had immense fun cooking and photographing and eating! Hopefully this will lead to the book we aim to publish later in the year in the same vein.
And so, as we ready the boat to leave on anchor for a few weeks, we are ecstatic at the thought of coming back to South Africa after just 10 months away. To see Mary and the girls, our precious family and friends and to join in on Kathi’s memorial race day in Durban. Sadly no Desre this time. But then you can’t win them all and we are hoping that she gets to see us here later in the year..
So brace yourselves Sheila’s – we are bringing along Australian Robin and his lovely wife Yan with us and will be flying in to Cape Town, visiting the Kruger and then on to PMB.
Hope to see you ALL!
Much love and light
                                                  Don and Jeanne

p.s. We found the bathroom visitor on an early morning visit to the joint on one of the islands on our way back to Langkawi from Thailand recently. Its called a Thai cure for constipation.