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.
We continue to make our way northwest towards Puerto Galera. It's been a fascinating tour so far. Our original plans were to head west across the Visyas towards Dumaguete. We read a lot about this little college town and it sounded like a place we would like. Not to mention, it had lots of hikes and tours in the surrounding towns and a pretty good anchorage just a few hours south.
Since making that decision, we have seen some really neat little towns and some very diverse areas. We've seen entire villages of corrugated metal lining the beach, medium sized towns with tasty restaurants, and what we thought was an isolated beach but ended up being inhabited by two families living in caves.
