Oh, This Exotic Life

As we were sitting here covered in sweat and deet the other night watching a movie, Andy and I were laughing about how “exoctic” our life is.  I know everyone at home thinks we sit around on beaches and drink margaritas all day (and sometimes we do), but the last few weeks have been some of the most un-romantic days we’ve had in a while.  So, just for fun, I thought I would share some pictures of some random things that drive me crazy about this little boat life.  I hope it makes you chuckle a little bit.

This is our mosquito scorecard.  At the time of the picture, we were 12-0 with the mosquitos and still going hard.  And for all you cruisers out there….yes, we had our screens up.

Have you ever seen those yachts that are all shiny and covered with beautiful teak, everything in it’s place, stowed away properly, tidy and neat?  Yeah, that’s not us…

This is where we go to the bathroom.  Our boat has lots of room.  Unfortunately, it’s all out in the open.  Very little space to “hide” our junk.  So, we pee and poo with our generator, compressor, vacuum cleaner and scuba tanks.  The garbage bags are temporary.  They’re full of a bunch of stuff we cleaned out of Jake’s room to give to kids in the Philippines.  We just didn’t have anywhere else to put it.  Under all that stuff is one of our engines.  Makes for an interesting time when we’re underway and you gotta go.

This is Andy’s space.  I just don’t even know what to say about this….

Welcome to our “garage.”  Here’s the other engine along with any bags we have, food stuff, extra scuba gear, rope locker, trash can.  Again, lots of room, I’m not complaining, just no doors to shut so I don’t have to look at it.

This is our power station.  That’s what you have to do when you have 2 computers, 3 iPads and a few thousand camera batteries always needing to be charged.  Too bad it sits on my “sofa.”

This is where we keep our  ????  I really don’t know what’s in there.   But it all used to be housed in four boxes and now it’s just one, so I think that’s probably the best we can do.  I do have a small iPod shuffle missing…it may be in there.

We spent a gazillion dollars replacing our battery bank.  After almost dropping one of these 150 lb babies in the water, we finally got them on board (by “we” I mean Andy and our friend Chuck), installed and jam packed with juice.  We’re reaping the benefits now, but what a pain.   AND I had to give up three full bins of storage for them.

I don’t have a picture of this one, because he’s too fast, but about once a week, I get surprised by a tiny little gecko that has taken up residence in and around my galley.  I know they’re good for bugs, but they are bad for my heart.

This has nothing to do with the boat, but bugs me every time I look at it.  You see those two big mugs on the outside?  We got those about 6 years ago at the Annapolis boat show when we bought a few “pain killers.”  See that little one in the middle?  I went to the boat show this year while I was in VA and got another one.  I paid MORE for that than we did for the big ones 6 years ago.   Irritating.

This is Jake’s latest selfie.  Well, I said I was going to show you some pictures of things that drove me crazy, right?  This little guy has days when he’s at the top of the list!

To be fair, I’m going to post this picture… probably something that would be at the top of Jake’s list of things that drive him crazy.  When mom and dad are too lazy to come look at the battle he’s having with his little men, he has to take a picture of it and bring the camera to  our room to show us.  Because those 20 steps it would take for us to go look, just seems so hard sometimes.

And the most un-exotic job of the week is being completed right now by the greatest man in the world….he’s scrubbing the barnacles and crap off the bottom of the boat.  When he comes up, our cockpit will be covered in scuba gear and Andy will be covered in tiny little shrimp.  They will die on his BCD (because they’re impossible to get off) and will stink.  His wet suit will smell equally bad and take a week to dry because well, it’s going to rain.  It always rains.

Enough whining for now…I thought you guys at home might appreciate that we have the same types of issues that you do.... things get dirty, we collect crap, boys don’t pick up after themselves, mom’s don’t always feel like cleaning, etc.  But after all of our cleaning today, we’re going to reward ourselves with some paddleboard jousting (don’t ask me) and a nice last dinner at Kramer’s with our buddy Bob.

Yep, I said ‘last dinner’...after a full month of waiting, we have finally received our parts for the autopilot.  They’ve been installed and Savannah is ready to go.  We’re going to provision up tomorrow and check out Monday morning.  So as you sit down to watch the Super Bowl Sunday night,  we’ll be dropping our mooring ball and heading out the west pass , starting our long awaited 520ish mile journey to the Philippines.