New crew member

Here's a picture of my skipper with the new crew member, Luca. We had to hi-tail it down to Canterbury last week to catch the birth of this newest member of the family, born to Jackie's daughter just last Monday. Able seaman Luca Thomas Blackburn weighed in at just under 8lbs and is doing just fine, although mum is a bit sore as he had to be brought into the world by caesarian. This wasn't the original passage plan, but then mother nature is always a little unpredictable, and it was decided that after 58 hours of beating into the prevailing winds that this was for the best, for mum and baby. 

As his mum had to stay in the hospital for a couple of days after the birth we took time out to go and have a look at an Ohlson 38 that was for sale nearby. Now I know that we shouldn't have been thinking about boats at this special time, but, hey, we had time to kill between visits, and this particular vessel had caught our eye as it was a similar boat to one that we had seen in Largs, a couple of weeks ago. This one was a bit more expensive but seeing the one in Largs and deciding it was almost our ideal boat we wanted to compare.
It didn't disappoint, in fact it was almost everything we wanted, but it wasn't our boat.
It already had a couple of offers on her, and not ones that we could match. We also had to consider the time it would take to get her ready for a transatlantic crossing, and to get us ready for a transatlantic crossing.
On the way back to the new bairn we came to the conclusion that sailing the Atlantic was not going to be possible, not unless we wait another year. That's how long it would take to get ourselves and the boat up to speed, so the visit to see this boat had at least focused our ambitions.
We sped back to the hospital in Margate and immersed ourselves in the business of babies.
The priority now was to get Luca and mum back home and to help settle the new crew member take his place in the world.
Our plans we're to move to Dom Rep early in the new year, but we'll just have to wait and see how things pan out with our new crew member and his mum. They may need us to be around just a bit longer, we just don't know.