APRIL/MAY 2015
USA TO PIRIAPOLIS, URUGUAY

After many traveling snafoos ( plane turned back to Miami due to Volcano eruption in Chile on April 22, 2 days hold up at Miami Airport hotel before heading out and landing in Piriapolis to find our luggage did not get on board, 3 bags were taxied to us and customs held onto 1 that we had to wait 3 days to get), we finally arrived exhausted and spent 5 days in a local hotel before launching the boat.
Thru haul problem required us to be assisted to our dock space and bow thruster needed to be repaired.
  We have now been on the boat for 1 week having much needed repairs that did not get accomplish during our absence.  Janaki and Graham can you relate to this?  Well we now have a new rebuilt toilet with new masserator.  Freezer is being worked on as I write and we are deleting many unneeded items that were required for Patagonia but not needed for Brazil. Think cold weather gear.

We had previously met new friends here and now have met new ones. Our friend Uta who is from Germany  sailed here with husband and 2 sons and has since split from husband and bought a farm here. We invited Uta and her friend Alex, who is German but had lived in Vermont for 20 years, and Rudy and Kristina from Switzerland and Bernhardt from Austria to join us for dinner at a local restaurant and Uta then invited us to a local party where we danced until 2 a.m.

                          from L around:  Rudy, Bernhardt, Alex, Uta, Pati, Kristina

We spent a day shopping at Punta del Este, the Miami of Uruguay and met a wonderful couple relocated from California 7 years ago. Kenny is a builder who was giving a seminar to Uta's boys and Karen had a herbology business.  We spent  Mother's Day at an Ex-Pats house where, belive it or not there we couples from NH and Indiana as well as Missouri and California.  It was wonderful hearing the unique travel stories and relocation challenges.  As you can tell by my writing (Pati) I tend toward the social side of things.  Had Marc written the blog it would be full of technical details and works in progress. We now wait for our weather window of a Southwest wind to take us to Brazil--first stop Florianapolis----where we will buy a new dinghy and explore the coast up to Recife where we will leave the boat to return to the US in mid-August to visit with our family from Tel Aviv.   We will miss Piriapolis and friends we have made. We hope Uta and sons will visit us as they have never been to the US.  We send love, peace and fair winds to all of our landlubber and sailing friends. Hope you are having a wonderful summer. Comments are always welcomed.