11-13-03 Well, well, well .... can't believe it's been almost 8 months since our last entry. We did promise to update our webpage when we settled into shore life, and we've had many inquiries about what we've been up to since last March. We arrived at Pat's parent's house on the Chesapeake Bay on May 1st and spend 2 months enjoying family and catching up with everyone. We then sailed SIMMER back to New Jersey in early July as Pat accepted a job back at Fort Monmouth. Pat is working as an engineer in the research and development software lab. Colleen decided not to go back into an engineering job for now, and is working at the boatyard where we keep SIMMER - Ocean Gate Yacht Basin. She is the service department office manager, still on the water and working with boats. Poor SIMMER is on the hard looking very sad, deserted and lonely. Of course, it's too cold here in New Jersey for us to live aboard, so we are once again "dirt-dwellers", renting a house. We do see SIMMER on a regular basis, but it's not the same. Our change back into the working world has been challenging - we had forgotten how much work interrupts life. We feel like our life is "on-hold" while we work and our bodies feel out of sync. We do not have the luxury of witnessing gorgeous sunrises, sunsets, the evening sky full of stars, moon phases and tides. We hope cruising again on SIMMER is in our future. Until then we have wonderful memories to keep us going. Colleen just finished putting our 5 years worth of pictures together into scrapbooks. We'll have to look at them often this first winter home, once the temperatures drop and the snow begins to fall. Hopefully it'll be a mild winter ..... thanks for following our adventure. To any of our readers contemplating a voyage, we say "GO"!
Colleen and Pat, Ocean Gate, NJ (Lat 39°55.7'N/ Lon 74°07.3'W)
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