Continued……                                                                                                   7

Cay Hotel. My Mom and Dad visited us regularly aboard their 110-foot windjammer Maverick, usually with guests aboard and we built the first dozen homes on Great Camano Island. I also ran my free-lance photography business and got a property management business off the ground. But I needed the invaluable help of Azula Lettsome from East End, Tortola, to help me care for my two children. On weekends we sailed our 34' Aulden yawl Tradewinds. Michael's spirit was as independent as my own. We have, therefore, never allowed security and the accumulation of tangible assets to be our only goal. When we have desired to uproot we have simply sold everything and moved, regardless of how many "losses" we have sustained in the doing.  Dad's words still ring true, "There is no such thing as security, Teré. It's all lost in the end.  So don't live your life like there is."

Not for all the tea in China.
In the early 1970's Michael and I, with our young children migrated to New Zealand in search of a place where they would have a settled upbringing and a decent education. There we went into the handmade furniture business and enjoyed raising Marina and Conrad in the country environment, with pony club and sailing in equal measure. When our children left home in the late eighties on their own worldly adventures we set sail on Sea Quest into the wide Pacific. There we traced long lazy zigzag lines across a seemingly endless expanse of water from the Antipodes to Japan and back again, stopping to work here and there along the way. On reflection I wouldn't have traded the experiences of my sea-going childhood for all the tea in China, for I have learned over time that the lessons in self-reliance, in discovering security within rather than without, are lessons dearly won in life.

                    ………………………….

Michael & Tere arriving back in NZ in Dec 1998 after 8 years sailing the Pacific Ocean.