Getting Ohana to Brazil

By the time we went back to Buenos Aires, we had been in South America for nearly two months. We were south in cold weather longer than expected, and although we were having fun exploring where we were, the girls were having a harder time understanding why we had uprooted our lives for this. We had promised them beautiful, warm beaches, family togetherness, and adventure, and our reality so far was not matching their visions. The weather was cold and rainy, we spent a lot of our time shopping in preparing the boat to leave Argentina, and so much of our schedule during the commissioning process was unpredictable and out of our hands, that we didn’t have nearly as much good family time as we would have liked.

So we decided that Ted would bring Ohana up to Brazil with a captain and one other crew, and the girls and I would fly up to Brazil ahead of Ted. It would be a quick change to warmer weather for the girls and would hopefully bring them back on board (so to speak!). We were thankful for our decision every time Ted and I talked or texted. He and the crew spent most of their time motoring into the wind, bitterly cold for the first few days, and they had the almost constant drone of the engines in choppy seas for nine days. 

Ted felt immense relief when he finally passed Punta del Este, Uruguay, rounding into the Atlantic Ocean. Gradually the temperatures turned warmer for them, and they spotted a surprising number of penguins (of all things!) as well as sea lions and dolphins. They were able to raise the sails only briefly, a few times, and the three of them were thankful to finally land in Angra dos Reis. We spent a couple of days with Pikin and Ana, enjoying the Brazilian sunshine, before they flew back to Buenos Aires and we were back together again as a family on Ohana.