Greetings,

As they say, "Better Late Than Never"! I have finally gotten the update done for the passage from Key West To Fronteras, Guatemala. It was fun getting it together! The really fun part was selecting the photos from the VERY large amount available. As everyone knows, I am not the best at taking photos when I should. My two crewman, however, take photos all of the time. Just for the passage portion, I had over 1600 photos of theirs from which to choose, plus my 70 photos! Not only did I have a lot of choices to make, but each choice had to be shrunk down to a smaller size so that all of the photos would not eat up a lot of bandwidth. Anyway, it is done, so I hope you enjoy reading about the passage and seeing the photos.

A treat from one of the crewman, Jeff, is a video he put together of the adventure of Jeff & Danny. The video, Jeff & Danny's Excellent Adventure covers their whole trip, the trip from Louisiana to Key West, and their time in Key West before the passage, then the passage to Rio Dulce, Guatemala. We stayed on DREAM AWAY, but they took a road trip to Tikal, and then back to DREAM AWAY. After Christmas on the Rio Dulce, they went off to Antigua, Guatemala, for a couple of days before flying back home to Louisiana.

Kitty and I are very happy to be back "home" at Monkey Bay Marina. We are getting back into the lifestyle of the Rio, and it's mostly slow pace. As you know, we arrived right in the middle of the Christmas and New Year holiday. Traffic on the Rio was huge, so it was much busier that we remembered. Now that the holidays have passed, traffic is back to normal, and we are enjoying the relative peace.

It has been raining pretty much every day since we arrived, but it is not that big of a problem. It is warm rain! In case anyone wonders why we are here, I have a couple of examples. When I awoke this morning, it was 72 degrees here. In Atlanta, GA, it was 11 degrees, in Delcambre, LA, it was 25 degrees, in Kemah, TX, it was 33 degrees, in Charleston, WV it was 4 degrees, in Albany, New York, it was -3 degrees, and in Boxborough, MA, it was -6 degrees. Not much more to add to that sentence!

In view of the foregoing discussion of the comparative temperatures, we are available for guests! If you would like to get away from it all, and just kick back in the warmth here, please let us know via email, and we will set something up. Good friends of ours, who keep their boat, TANTALUS here on the Rio will have their boat hauled out the first couple of weeks of February. They will be staying on DREAM AWAY during that time. After that time, we have no one scheduled.

Kitty had volunteered me to be the Santa Claus at the Casa Guatemala facility here on the Rio Dulce. I did do it, and it was great fun, and as usual the kids loved it. The kids are what makes all of the trouble and hassel worth it. You can read a bit about the activities here on the Rio Dulce Chisme online newspaper. Once this update is out, I will be working on the update that covers our Christmas activities, and it will have many more photos of the Santa at Casa Guatemala, and other holiday activities.

Last year, 2013, while I was Santa Clause for the elementary school in Delcambre, LA, we were given several bags of toys that were left over from the Santa's Workshop at the school. We brought all of those toys with us to Guatemala. We gave the donated toys to Casa Guatemala so the children would have them for this year's celebration. We really appreciate the folks in Delcambre, who made that wonderful donation. It allowed the orphanage to give every child from the mountain villiages who came for the celebration a toy. It was wonderful.

As you are aware, I am way behind on posting the monthly Maintenance Logs, but I did get the June 2014 Maintenance Log uploaded to the web page. I will be working to get all of the logs caught up. One of my resolutions is to stay current with the Maintenance/Cruising Log, and to catch up on the logs that have not been done. If for no other reason, they are a great record of how I keep busy, and the work done on DREAM AWAY.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, and may the New Year be full of health and happiness for each and every one of you.

regards,

jimk

Member Seven Seas Cruising Association

WEB page http://www.dreamaway.net