January 1-21, 2002 We spent about six weeks in the states visiting with family and friends, which was FANTASTIC. In our small Condo we spent Christmas with my parents, Stacy and Rob and Jaclyn and Jason!!! It was crowded with the eight of us, but we enjoyed every minute. We even had time to learn from Tom and Phyllis how to assemble our logs into a hard covered book. Tom did all the preparation of copying and gathering all the pieces while Phyllis edited EVERY ONE of our logs to clean up our spelling and grammar and to make them readable. Lorraine and Dave (he made all the maps for the book) were there to give us a hand as well. We had an assembly line with Tom as the manager. We made six books which all turned out fantastic!! Buying parts and supplies for the boat was the hectic!! The most difficult part was trying to pack everything we were taking back to the boat into 4 bags each under 70 pounds. But we did it with a total of 3 pounds to spare.leaving various pieces of things behind!! We were really surprised when we checked in for our short flight to Dalaman and found that we were 180 pounds over weight! All was not lost. The charge was only 30 cents per pound. We arrived at JFK airport about three hours prior to our departure as required to clear security. However, the plane from Istanbul was six hours late, making our trip to Istanbul about 20 hours. It seems that Istanbul had more than a foot of snow and since this hasn't happened in over 14 years, they didn't know what to do with all the snow!!! We went to the Grand Bazaar and made our way past most of the 4,000 shops to find our rug merchant who was holding our two Turkish rugs for the boat. They look and fit great!!! We are back a week now with the boat on the hard...working everyday trying to fix, clean and put things away. I keep on asking Rudy if we are having fun yet, he just laughs!!!!! Today (Jan. 16th) they put us in the water. They used the 100-ton travel lift to move us to the water and then transferred Boundless to the 15-20-ton lift to put us into the water. (A large motor yacht was sitting in the larger bay with no Captain on board) Talk about being stressed out!!!! However, everything worked out well! It is raining today and we are thankful that we are snug in our boat with the electric heater on. On January 18th, we made our way to Bodrum, which is about 200 km. Northwest of Marmaris. From there we took a ferry to the Greek island of Kos. Why, you ask, are we doing this??? The answer is because our three-month VISA is up and we need to re-new it. Of course, we could have done this at the airport as we came into Turkey from the States if we had known..ah, the price of knowledge! After our 3 and a half hour bus ride, we found the hotel ($10 a night, including breakfast for two) that friends from Trinidad, Connie and Paul on Noah, told us about. We bought our ferry tickets for the next day and had lunch. We went to visit the Bodrum Castle and then it started to rain. The Castle was so interesting we decided to continue our tour in the rain. It is the Castle of St. Peter and it is now the Museum of Underwater Archaeology. As we entered we saw bits of ancient masonry from the *mausoleum* incorporated into the walls as well as many of the coat of arms of the Christian soldiers. We visited the "medieval shop", the Chapel, the Italian tower, which held a small glass collection, the Shipwreck Glass Hall with many pieces of glass and other artifacts, and the English Tower which depicted how the knights lived at the time. We were not able to see a few of the other towers because they were being repaired. When we arrived back at the hotel DRIPPING WET, we asked for more blankets and an electric heater. We dried our clothes as best as we could (I however, melted my Boundless jacket!!) and went out for Mc Donald's and a movie. The movies here are in English with Turkish sub titles. It works for us! The next day we arrived for the 9:00am ferry for the hour ride to Kos, however we had to wait an hour for the Harbor Master to get out of bed. we were told this happens every Saturday morning. The ferry holds from 200-300 people. Today it held 3.It is a little slow down here in the winter. We explored the town.had some pastry and I went to find pork chops, bacon and gin while Rudy went to do e-mail. We were all successful until we tried to find a place to eat lunch. Nothing was opened..NOTHING!! We finally found an internet café that would make a couple of sandwiches. We got on the ferry (a family of 5 joined us) and then to the bus station for our three and a half hour trip back to our boat. We went to our favorite restaurant called Pineapples and met nine of our boating friends having dinner who asked us to join them . and we did!!! We had a good time and we all met again for breakfast the next morning along with several other couples. Sunday breakfast has become a social occasion amongst the cruisers. I am trying to go to Yoga 3 times a week and to the gym 4 times a week. The Yoga sessions are just a group of liveaboards getting together with a videotape substituting for a teacher. Jaclyn made me a Yoga video for Christmas which we will be using this week. I guess we are settling down to a routine again and after a couple of more projects we will start exploring again. *Footnote: The ruler Mausolus (377-353B.C.) greatly increased the power and wealth of the people he ruled. He restored many of the cities he commanded in the Hellenize style and was working on a suitably self-aggrandizing tomb at the time of his death which his sister and wife completed.. therefore giving us the word "mausoleum". This tomb came to be regarded as one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world!! _________________________________________________________________ Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com