Day 12

Yesterday was a day of rest so we left the squirrel in the bag (aka spinniker). Consequently, we only made 124 miles progress. Today, being a new day, we decided to get it back out and make some additional headway. I was the one laughing today when we started turning to wind to bring the main down. The spinniker was all rigged and ready to go and then it started getting back filled and blew right in Andy's face. He struggled a few minutes grabbing at sail and then he leaped (yes, leaped) on top of it into the net and tried to hold it down with everything he could (including arms, legs and all other body parts) and he did it all with such grace! But it's flying now and we're back to 7.5 - 8 knots.

I think Jake lost his brain at the halfway mark. Today was quite a struggle with school. Math problems he was breezing through two days ago suddenly became more complicated than calculus. I guess that's normal, my brain shuts down sometimes too, but it's frustrating when you're star student's brain turns to mush! As for school, I've gotten a lot of questions about what do we do. I'm not going to get into the right or wrong of methods as it's a whole can of worms I don't want to open but I will share what we do and what has worked so far. Since he's only five, I try not to pack the day too much. If we do an hours worth of work, that's plenty to make significant headway on the basics. Which is what I try to do...stick to the basics - Math, Reading, Writing. Occasionally, we'll do some science experiments or read about certain topics he's interested in (i.e. Volcanos, Weather, Sharks), but for the most part, those things come in our every day activities. For Math, we use Math U Can See, which Jake loves (relatively speaking of course). It presents the basic math principles in a very different way than when I grew up, but it seems more in line with his way of learning (hands on). We're using Hooked on Phonics for Reading which is going pretty good. I do try to switch this up with games like scrabble, or building words with alphabet noodles, or some other silly things as reading is definitely not his favorite activity. Finally, for writing, we use Handwriting without Tears. So far, no tears. I've found the Jack and Annie Magic Treehouse series to be great for reading aloud to him and the research guides are fantastic. The last time I went home, I picked up as many as I could get my hands on. As for curriculums, I started out with Calvert but only used it for a short period of time as it was just way too much for a five year old and much of it was irrelevant to our life, therefore "boring." I'm not poo-pooing Calvert because for the teacher, it really does lay it all out for you but for Jake's age, it didn't work for us. Not to say I may not revisit it in the future when the work gets more complicated... Of course this is not all inclusive of what we do, but it does cover the basics and seems to be working so far. I think the key is to be flexible...

I've made a discovery about sea sickness...for me, there's no "getting over it"...meaning, I need to take my medicine the whole time we're out here. I took it for a week and then thought, well, maybe I don't need it. Maybe I'm "used" to it. I think today is probably the first day it's all out of my system and I'm not feeling so hot. So back on the pills I go. My hesitation is that I'm taking the Mexican version of Scopamine (or Sturgeron, I'm not sure which) and there's quite a bit of controversy about it. I've read all the articles in Latitude 38, and done some of my own research, and my final conclusion is that it works for me, and on top of that, some of the side effects they mention sound like a walk in the park compared to being sea sick. With all that said, I'm disappointed that I still have to take it as I don't like taking any medicine for 20 days!

And hopefully, that's all it will be, 20 days! We're on day 12 so it's all down wind from here, so to speak.

Two items of note... I mentioned Latitude 38. For those of you that don't know, it's a magazine for cruisers and sailors and always proves to be very entertaining. They organize this "puddle jump" that we're doing and in their February issue, they wrote small blurbs and posted pictures of many of the boats leaving Mexico. You can go online and read it if you're interested to see exactly what kind of company we keep :) Google Lattitude 38 and you should find it no problem.

Second item... I screwed up our positioning a few days ago...sorry about that. If you're looking at YOTREPS you'll see that it looks like we took a turn for Ecuador. I assure you that's not the case. Just a case of fat fingering here with no way to correct it. Apologies all around.

That's it for now! Lunch is waiting! I hope everyone has a wonderful Monday (yes, I still know what day it is) and rest of the week!

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