Why?

Why leave a nice cushy lifestyle for a tough sometimes scary cruising life on the high seas? Good question! It will be a challenge both physically and mentally to fly half way around the world, board a strange boat and take off across strange Oceans. It takes 30 hours and 3 stops via Malaysian Airlines to get to the Island of Lankawi where the boat is moored, and now being well cared for by Paul of Nautical Bits Snd Bhd Co. at the Royal Lankawi Yacht Club. Back to why? I'm still thinking! Several reasons - on our last boating adventure we spent one summer in the Mediterranean cruising along the coast of France, Italy, Greece, Malta, Tunisia, and Spain. It was a it rushed, since we wanted to pass thru Gibraltar and into the Atlantic before the winter storms came. There is so much to see and do in the Mediterranean that we now tentatively plan to spend two summers in the Med. This time we plan to visit Cyprus, Turkey, and maybe Croatia. My first overseas assignment in 1965 was to spend 4+ years in Tripoli, Libya. We were in Tripoli for the 6 day war and later the Libyan revolution when Khadaffi came into power. Marvi would like to return with/or without the boat for a visit and maybe look up old Libyan friends.

Last year I turned 70 and had a titanium hip implant, and can't remember sh-t, so the later-in- life crisis set in. I figure I have another 10 years in which I might? want to, or will be able to do this. So, this is a start. If I make it to 80+, I can watch TV, and make up embellished stories about our great adventures back when I was a young 70.

Longer term, if all goes well, we would like to keep Toucan Tango somewhere south of California where we can go and drift about in the warmth during the cold winter.

On top of all this we hope it will be fun!!!!!

That was a loooong journey: We left on Thursday evening and arrived on Saturday afternoon! Sacto to Lax 1 1/2 hrs, Lax to Taipei 13hrs, Taipei to Kualu Lumpur 5 hrs, KL to Langkawi 1hr all the time moving from one date line to another. We went straight to the hotel, had a shower then dinner, then went to bed at 8pm and awoke at 7:70 am.

Today has been spent unpacking and generally getting familiar with Toucan Tango. Sheila and Paul (the couple who look after boats and boat people here) took Ruth the a supermarket to buy the essentials - coffee, Tonic! It seems that you can get everything here. Lots of familiar brands and, of course, even more not-so-familiar ones.