Greetings from Cool Breezes : A Family's Year Aboard

The alluring sea beckons sailors from every corner of the earth. They ply the seven seas, traverse the world's great lakes and waterways, meander along rivers and canals, and tuck into safe harbours. Among these travellers are parents with children. For one year, a family from the Canadian prairie jumped off the deep end, and joined them. 'Greetings from Cool Breezes' is not just about sand, surf, salt and sails, or even sunny ports-of-call; it's about what it takes, and what it's like, to be away for a year from the multi-tasking merry-go-round of North American culture. This book relates the experience of a landlubber family out of its element that learns not only how to become liveaboards, but also to live in the moment. This book tells the true sea adventures and misadventures of the Kirwin crew: parents Patrick and Jeananne, their four children Erin (12), Ben (10), Liam (9) and Meara (4), and their Labrador retriever Jasper. In August 2000, they bought a catamaran called Cool Breezes and sailed, for a year and a day, along the eastern U.S. seaboard and the rugged north coast of Cuba, and among the many dazzling archipelagos of the Bahamas. A faithful account of their trials and tribulations was reported via e-mail missives back home, each bearing the subject line Greetings from Cool Breezes. Those e-mails form the backbone of this book.