I was talking with a friend of mine this week who had just been to Hilton Head, SC on vacation. Her family went on a dolphin tour and she said that being on the boat reminded her of me. She said that being on the boat was so peaceful but she imagined it wasn’t always so. The truth is, at least 90% of the time we spend on the boat is peaceful…and the other 10% is where the really great stories come from.
We moved Galt over to the marina in Sint Maarten on Thursday and took a day to enjoy the resort life. One plus of being on a boat is many of the marinas in the Caribbean are located in four and five star resorts. When you stay in the marina, you get all of the benefits of the resort for a quarter of the price. At this marina, we have a pool, restaurants, a spa, unlimited hot water and even a casino. There is a full gym if you so desire to get that kind of exercise. We do not feel the need for a gym because we get plenty of Galtercise. This week, our main exercise has been Hatch aerobics. The workout goes like this….2am: starts to rain so you jump out of bed, run up two sets of stairs, close the front hatch, close the back hatch, back downstairs and climb into bed. The rain stops two minutes later. 7am: boat is stuffy so run on deck, open front hatch, open back hatch. 9am: begins to rain so repeat process. 9:05am: rain stops so open hatches. 10am: rain starts. Pretend not to notice hoping that either the rain will stop or your boat partner will finally give up and go close the hatches. Rain, rinse, repeat all day. We also had a lot of boat yoga this week as well. Boat yoga is where you take two large people and try to squeeze them into the tiniest places on a boat. Then, you twist yourself around until you can reach what you need to fix with hopefully at least two fingers. Who needs a gym when we have a Galt? Since we are in a marina, that also means that I get to share the seedier sides of boat life this week. As we prepare to be on the move again, we want to be sure that critical systems are at their best. We worked on cleaning out the bilge (which I have explained in a previous blog) but this time, we also decided to clean and reset the pumps. Bilge pumps are one of the most critical things on a boat as the pumps are what is between you and Davy Jones’ locker. Needless to say, you want them working at full capacity. So, we open the floor plate (see picture), suck out the scunge that gathers in the bilge and clean the pumps. Cleaning was not too disgusting (we have had far worse jobs on the boat). Just a little Krud Kutter, replace some rusted holders and glue a broken piece. Now we are ready for an emergency that we hope will never come. Next, we had the anchor chain issue. Much like the bottom of the boat, when an anchor is in the water for a month, it grows all kinds of lovely habitats made up of seaweed and small barnacles. As we raised the anchor on Thursday, the line that takes the tension off the anchor chain (called a snubber) came up looking like Cousin It from the Addams Family (see picture). The anchor was not quite that bad but still took several hours with a scrub brush to get it clean…not my favorite job. Then, there were the “we are spoiled” jobs this week. We hired a man to scrub the boat hull, propeller and rudder so they are ready to make it to Grenada. Also in the marina, they have a guy who comes to your boat, picks up your dirty laundry and it magically reappears on the dock the next day…all clean, fresh and folded! We are going to be quite spoiled by departure time. After all of our hard work, we decided to go out for happy hour and Saturday night dinner in Simpson Bay. We made our way over to Soggy Dollar which has $1 beer daily between 5pm-7pm. Just as we were leaving to go grab some food, all of the electricity in Simpson Bay went off. It is amazing how quiet it gets once you take electricity out of happy hour! We walked out onto the street and saw one restaurant that obviously had a working generator because they were lit up like a Christmas tree. It is also amazing how easy picking a restaurant is when you take electricity out of the equation. I had never had Lebanese food and probably would not have picked it if there had been other choices. The food was very tasty so lack of modern day wonders has once again broadened my horizons! By this time next week, we will hopefully be on the move to Dominica. We have mapped out our plan and the guinea pig boats that have gone before us have all made it without too many issues. I will do my best to get a blog uploaded next week but I make no promises since I am not sure what the internet situation will be. I will give you all an update just as soon as possible! Have a wonderful week and may the laundry genie show up at your door!
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AuthorSally Miller Archives
May 2024
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