Jeannette Breault – A Wonderful Lady ... posted 17 Jan 2018

Jeannette Breault – A Wonderful Lady    

On Monday morning we learned that Gloria’s mom had died during the night. Whilst not unexpected it seems that you can never be fully prepared for the loss of someone you love. It doesn’t make sense to view her passing as a tragedy, she was 92 years old and had lived a full and happy life. Nonetheless, the sense of loss is profound.  She was fortunate to have had the opportunity to spend 71 years with her husband Gerard and more than six decades with her four children, Paul, Rod, Liz and Gloria. She got to see her two grandchildren, Eric and Tasha, grow up and forge lives of their own, and “mems” was also a great grand-mother to Laura, at age nine, the youngest member of her immediate family. Throughout her life she was mostly in fine health and she and “peps” lived as they wished, with great independence into their late 80s and early 90s. We were fortunate to have had such a wonderful lady in our lives. In the immediate aftermath of her death, Gloria and I have already started to recall so many happy memories, but there is no doubt that she will be sorely missed.

We were in Nevis when we heard that “mems” and “peps” were both declining rapidly and so we decided to try and accelerate our arrival in St Lucia. We sailed directly from Nevis to Des Haies, Guadeloupe on Sunday 14^th (~75 miles, 14 hours), where we stopped overnight without clearing immigration. On Monday morning we heard that Gloria’s mom had died, and so we sailed directly to Rodney Bay, St Lucia (~145 miles, 24 hours) and have brought Cotinga into a slip at the Rodney Bay Marina. We will leave the boat here and fly back to the USA on Thursday for the funeral. This may also give Gloria a chance to see her Dad, who remains in desperately poor health.

We will return to St Lucia next week, which will give us some time to get settled back on board before our friend Simon arrives from the UK on 1^st February. We will pick up the blog again when we return.

Mike

Jeannette Breault  ...    19 Nov 1925 - 15 Jan 2018

This picture was taken in the cockpit of Cotinga in Aug 2012 up in North East Harbor, Maine