On board Happy Dancer there seems to be an indirect proportional link between the availability of internet access and efficiency in terms of actually getting things done. When one goes up, the other goes down. Luckily Ozone – Malta’s paying public internet service – is miserable quite often. As such, the last week has seen no blog updates, but an impressive increase in ticks on our Atlantic-Prep-To-Do list (on top of articles, radio interviews and the usual yoga classes and family life): New lifelines, new outboard, sealed all deck-thrus, replaced most nav lights with LED, reinforced the bimini, booked haul-out for anti-foul and keel bolt inspection, ordered charts for Crete, Rhodes, Turkey and Tunisia (WhoWhoo!), replaced most hatches (WhooWhooWhoo!). The list goes on.

After arriving in Malta last October, we needed a break from the overwhelm that the first months of living afloat can bring. Now we are ready to attack again with full tanks and over-filling enthusiasm. They say the first year of life on board of a boat is the hardest. We are in our 9th month and already enjoy everything so much more than at the beginning.

We’ve recently been joined by another kids boat on Vida Loca – our new best friends, to say the least – which makes us two crazy families wintering  in Malta. They moved on board a few months later than us and, like with newborns, a few months here make a massive difference. For us somewhere between the first and the third quarter something happened which made us see breakages (and things constantly break on a boat!) and detours as an opportunity to learn, rather than another hurdle.

Life is change. Growth is optional. Chose wisely!