Doing boatwork in exotic places. . .

Another week done and although it is exciting to be in the water, we still are not ready to set sail. We are so eager, it is hard to wait. There is a saying, “Cruising is doing boatwork in exotic places”. A somewhat pessimistic saying. Once you are at the point of maintaining your boat it is probably not completely true because you can spend more time exploring the places you visit rather than doing boatwork. However, for us, right now, it feels very true. We decided this probably means we need to spend a little more time enjoying the place we are in and take a break from our constant boatwork. However, this is hard to do when we just want to be finished so we can get sailing!

Things we did accomplish this week; we got the toilets working, we got one fridge working and the freezer figured out, we got all the bilge pumps working properly and fixed a small leak around a water intake, we got the pressure water system working. We also put up the courtesy flag line and our own flag and flagpole! We started fixing our lazyjacks (the ropes that help guide the mainsail down into a neat pile on the boom). And we categorized all the running rigging and extra lines we have. Halyna is becoming more and more proficient at using our label maker. The boat truely had some things to address.

Happily, we also got the dingy in the water! We can now zip around the bay in the dingy to get supplies and explore a little. On our first trip we took a little detour into the mangroves to explore a little. Our next adventure this week is to take the catamaran to Sandy Island for the day and start some sailing practice.

We were initially supposed to set sail to Sint Maarten on Friday but then realized we had more to do and hoped we would get it down over the longweekend. But of course, everything is closed and people were off on well-deserved breaks, so we will take a little longer to be ready. Also, one of our engines has a slip in the transmission so our mechanic is going to take the transmission out and will likely have to order parts to repair it. Parts are hard to come by on a small island, so this will likely take some time. Our surveyor also felt that were a few other things we should fix before safely sailing, and we are listening to his advice. So now we are likely delayed another week and a bit. We still hope to be in Sint Maarten by the end of April.

Finally, we enjoyed our Easter weekend. Luckily the Easter Bunny was aware we would be on a boat in the Caribbean during easter, so he prepared himself to bring chocolate eggs for us. The kids had a quick egg hunt, Owen missed the hunt because it was ealier than he wanted to get up. The younger kids did leave him the few last difficult ones to find though. We also re-introduced our family tradition of having a nice sit-down breakfast every Sunday. Pancakes, eggs and bacon (probably won’t be every Sunday because it was pretty darn expensive). We also figured out how to use our oven finally – and thanks to my sister figured out what temperature to cook at (our tiny oven only gives us gas mark temperatures). We had a very yummy ham dinner for Easter – my favorite!

Happy Easter Everyone!