Greetings all and thanks for checking in on our adventure.  School has officially begun and the crew of Truansea is putting the final touches on packing up the house and making several piles of supplies for our sailing adventure.  How all of those piles of books, bedding and gear are going to fit into our SUV remains to be seen, although I suspect it’s going to be a tight fit!

All the stuff we’re not going to take.

We somehow managed to empty our house into a 12×25 foot storage unit and even filled up the back of our Subaru before parking it in the neighbor’s field.  When you go from an 1800 sq ft house to about 180 sq ft of living space on a boat something has to stay behind.  In this case it’s about 99% of everything we own.

As we head to Florida we will be backtracking portions of the Oregon Trail and the transcontinental railroad.  The opportunity to make history come alive is one we’re not going to miss on this trip and will be a part of our boy’s ongoing year of home or boat schooling.

Knowing that the engine of our SUV and the little diesel engine of our boat will be of great importance in the success of our trip we began teaching the boys early how an engine works by building a working model of a V-8 engine.  Revell makes a great visible V-8 that actually performs all of the functions of a working engine when you turn the crank.  An accompanying guidebook explains some of the finer points even Dads can learn a thing or two from!

Completed model V-8 engine.

Well the sun is up and there is much to do before we go, please come back to check in with us again.

Mark