My husband Ron and I live aboard our 40 foot Island Packet sailboat and are presently at the beginning of a circumnavigation. We set sail from Pensacola, FL, on December 1, 1997, arriving in San Diego, CA, on June 8, 1999. We have put 8,000 miles under our keel to date, spending 15 months in the Caribbean, then transiting the Panama Canal and heading up the Pacific coast to Costa Rica, Mexico, and CA. While in San Diego, I signed up for Gordon West's weekend ham class so that we could more closely follow and participate in the active ham nets and could communicate with our family via e-mail while cruising. We plan to leave San Diego January 1, return to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for two months and then head to the South Pacific, reaching Australia by November 2000. Ron and I are both native Mississippians who now consider ourselves citizens of the world. We have between us five children and three grandchildren.