21st August

Due to the current teachers strike our two boys have been unable to attend school. Most schools in the “burbs” are open and operating, their school is open but no teaching is being done due to the poor learner turn out. (They have averaged less than 100 students per day). So we kept the kids home on Wednesday and by Thursday we had decided to come down to the boat so I find myself, pleasantly I might add, aboard our yacht for an unexpected long weekend. Axel and Peta decided to come down for the weekend as well so we even have friends aboard.

The view from our cockpit

I have taken the time with the kids at home to do a practise run for home schooling and it seemed to work out well. We completed some prepared reading, some unprepared reading, Rauen wrote a narrative essay of 150 words and Kyle wrote a half a page describing a character. We took 20 unknown words for the book we had completed reading and look them up and wrote out their meaning. We acted out the meanings of the words and even found some more words while doing the dictionary work to look up. All in all a very successful and enjoyable couple of days teaching and learning. I am sticking to English at the moment as this is a subject I have already received the work for. Other subjects will follow once the next order arrives with the complete syllabus for both boys.

When we arrived at the yacht yesterday the first tack was to open the stop cocks and close the bilges (which are still remaining dry). The next one was to search the cupboards and other areas the roaches were hiding before and to our delight there were none to be seen…I still don’t think we have won the war yet though. We then unpacked and cleaned the cockpit area before Axel and Peta arrived. We tried our the thinners on removing permanent marker and found it only worked on certain surfaces. We quickly removed all the Debenair names from these surfaces and realising we needed a few things, I headed off to Pick n Pay to find a permanent marker, some batteries and some food and coldrinks.

Before name removal

As I arrived back Axel and Peta were looking for a parking so we unloaded the cars and headed back to the yacht for some more unpacking and a grand tour before settling down for a few sunset drinks and lots of laughter! What can I say life a yacht is awesome!