From Jack: Hi all! We hope you had a super 2009 and your holiday season is a wonderful one. We are back on Bonaire now (Latitude: 12 degrees, 9.6 minutes North, Longitude: 68 degrees 17 minutes West). Finally, we are well and heading in the right direction!
          We flew back to Curacao right after New Years '09 and we were met at the airport by our friend, Dianne, whose husband, Don Tetreault, had died suddenly while they were in TX in Sept '08. Her goal was for us to help her sail "Cloud 9" to Bonaire (with a memorial service for Don at sea), she would live aboard until her crew arrived in May to sail it to the USA for sale. My favorite definition of sailing is "doing boat repairs in exotic places." Helping Dianne meant I was repairing two boats not one! The fates smiled, we helped her take her boat to Bonaire, and her crew delivered it to the USA where it sold. Now Dianne is starting a new life stateside. We wish her the best!
          We launched Denali Rose in early January and I installed a solar panel above our bimini and got the wind generator up and running. Between the solar panel and the wind generator, we gain about 280 amp hours each day if the wind is blowing 15 knots and it is sunny. Our refrigerators use about 180 per day and our other electrical items (computer, radios, etc.) use the rest. If we need more, or the wind does not blow, we use the generator.
          In late February, we sailed 45 miles west to Aruba because the Netherland Antilles (Curacao and Bonaire) limit foreign boats (like us) to stay here only 12 months. Our time would expire in early March. Our choices of foreign ports were either Venezuela (NO THANKS!) or Aruba. In Aruba, we stayed at beautiful Renaissance Marina with free access to their private island, swimming pool and gardens. It is within easy walking distance of the capital with shopping, dining spots, movies and museums. It is the friendliest island in the Caribbean!
          Trade winds blew constantly from the east all of March. We waited all month for the winds to calm down enough for us to sail back east to Curacao and farther east to Bonaire to meet our friend, Felicia, who planned to fly there in April. The winds finally calmed April 4th and we headed back to Curacao, dropped the anchor at beautiful Santa Cruz anchorage, got back up at dawn, and sailed on to Bonaire.
We had a great time scuba diving on Bonaire and sailed back to Curacao to start the arduous task of storing the boat for hurricane season. This time, when storing the boat, we tried a new idea to keep some ventilation by running a tiny solar-run vent fan and we installed a new thru-hull in the keel and left it open for the summer to allow the rainwater out of the bilge. Wow, these two things helped!
          Our Alaska trip was cut to one month (Fred explains why in her notes). Once we arrived in Wasilla at Dick and Kathy's house, we in-stalled modern wood flooring in their bedrooms and home office. Fred and Kathy rearranged the guest bedroom. I even had time off to go salmon fishing with my son, Rob, and grandson, Clayton, (age 7) in Prince William Sound. The black bears were fantastic as well as the glaciers. Only bumped one iceberg but it made a nice cocktail! We hope for a longer visit next year.
We flew back to Chicago and picked up our F-350 Ford pickup truck where we had left it in July. We then drove to the RV factory where they had been working on our 5th Wheel RV warranty issues. However, our RV still was not ready! They worked like mad and got it done for us the next day with great success. We were also there during the Carriage brand RV owners' international rally. One woman told us, "There's this stove thing in the kitchen, but it's still new. We eat out when we travel." That's FRED'S kind of RVer! Ha!
          There is nothing like a crowd of kids to teach you techno-humility! Fred got the bright idea to buy a Wii game with sports games to keep us fit (right?). Honorary grandkids, Sierra (10), Tracer (8) and Jaedah (3) plus our cousin, Halie Green (4), had a great time beating us! Halie's parents, Corey and Jessica, even practiced Wii bowling until midnight just to catch up with her! We brought our Wii down to the boat but have not had time to set it up yet!

FUTURE PLANS: My brother, Dick, and Kathy Webb are flying down from Alaska to visit us in Curacao in late January.
     Our 2010 plans call for a sail to Aruba in March and hauling out again in Curacao in April. Then fly to the USA, Maryland and Alaska, and fly back to the boat in September. Then sail off to Aruba, spend Christmas 2010 in Colombia, then off to the San Blas Islands in Panama and haul out in Colon, Panama, in April 2011. We will head through the Panama Canal in Nov/Dec 2011 and head for Nicaragua.
We have a new website this year to follow our sailing route: look on the internet: http://www.winlink.org/userpositions and then type in my call sign: KG4BYM and hit Search to see where the boat is on a map. If we have a recent position report posted; our call sign will be on the right of the page and you can just click on this.
          If you would like to see our boat on a live web cam site here in Bonaire, go to: http://www.breathebonaire.com/index.php?CURRENT_CAM=bonairecam1&SET_CAM=bonairecam1 Our boat is on the far right.
-- We just saw Black Peter (St. Nicolas's helper in Dutch tradition) and the Holiday season is upon us;"Bon Pasku" Happy holidays in Papiamento.
Hope you have a super 2010.

From Fred: Happy Holidays!
          Good luck and great health care both Stateside and overseas sums up 2009 for me! When we sailed to Aruba, I had serious stomach pain, that was first thought to be Dengue Fever but lab work showed I had diverticulitis. Dr. Anaya, a Johns Hopkins-trained specialist who even visited me on the boat, was top notch! While in the Aruba hospital women's ward, I met a fellow patient, Janine Croes, who became our best friend on Aruba! Janine is the front desk manager of a lovely vintage hotel, Amsterdam Manor. Later, when we both recovered, she drove us on a fantastic tour around the island.
          Our great friend from West Virginia, Felicia Hovermale, flew down to meet us in Bonaire for a much-deserved vacation. The perfect boat guest, she used a foldable duffle bag, brought swimsuits and casual clothes. She won "VIP status" for bringing boat parts and our stateside mail (Christmas cards in April!). We kept her supplied with mango juice and crowned her "Princess of Mango Island." Each morning Jack and I would awake to find her serenely perched in the cockpit surveying her watery domain where turtles surfaced to greet her. Jack taught her to snorkel behind our boat in the clear, teal blue water. Since Bonaire is only 12 degrees north of the equator, at night we pointed out both the Big Dipper and the Southern Cross constellations. We all had a great time and hope she comes back soon!
          In late June while prepping the boat for summer storage in Curacao, I had chest pains, which I attributed to dehydration and/or acid reflux. The pains came and went, even on the flight to the USA, so I drank more water. The morning after we arrived in Newark, NJ, while we were on the bus to the airport, the pain increased so Jack called 911. The Continental Airlines representative got the airport medics there in minutes. They took me to Beth Israel Hospital, which has an entire cardiac floor. The cardiologist found a 99% block in one heart artery; he installed a stent and released me the next day! My Mom must have worked overtime in heaven to get me to an American hospital that specialized in cardiac cases in time!
          Off we drove to my hometown, Hagerstown, Md., where my cousin, Sandy Hankey Green, RN, and her husband, John, opened their home once more to us. Sandy recommended an excellent cardiac doctor for follow up care.
          With my doctor's OK to travel, we picked up our RV that is stored in West Virginia. Since our Carriage Fifth Wheel RV had warranty problems, and the local guys did not have the right equipment, we drove it back to the factory in Indiana for major repairs. Jack told them we would return in a month. We drove the truck on to Chicago, parked it and flew to Alaska.
          As a joint anniversary and my 60th birthday present, Jack bought us Jimmy Buffett concert tickets for the show Sep 3rd in Manassas, Virginia! It was our all time favorite concert. The fans' costumes were as entertaining as the show!
          Still enjoying family history, we turned our attention to 1700s-era research in Frederick County, Maryland. We joined the Thurmont Historical Society and learned about an open house event benefitting a local church renovation the next week. I was delighted to find a cousin there, who remembered my Dad and my Uncle Sam from childhood visits to their farm in the 1930s! We promised to visit her next summer.
          In September, we joined fellow cruisers at the Seven Seas Sailing Association's Annapolis event where a woman gave a lecture about rounding Cape Horn in South America. Those were exciting photos of boats near icebergs but that kind of sailing is too cold for me!
          I am now on Facebook.com as "Susie Hankey Webb" and I am uploading our travel photos there. (I used Susie instead of Fred to avoid grief from my siblings.)
          We try our best to plan our days but the boat decides what projects we tackle! We do take time for cardio walks and enjoy meeting friendly local people along the way.
          We love hearing from you all, especially via E-mail, so please send a note (or your Christmas newsletter) to us at wanderingwebbs2@cs.com.

God Bless you all, our deployed troops, and their families.
Jack Webb and Susan "Fred" Hankey Webb
Wanderingwebbs2@cs.com