SeaSix: Casting Off

Day 2
hastily written by Stacy

Everyone slept fairly good on our first night aboard "Hakuna Matata". A nice warm rain came through in the middle of the night which, for those of us who sleep with their top hatches open, we got a nice little shower before we all managed to batten them down.

Here's Connor and Chloe in their berth fast asleep. Notice the blanket isn't covering their legs. It's pretty warm here and there is little need for a blanket. Looks like they slept with their hatch closed and also shaded (if you look directly above them) so they had little issues with rain--unlike the rest of us.

Connor woke up happy this morning remembering that he had COLD CEREAL waiting to greet the morning.

We're still docked at the Marina doing last minute preparations and waiting for delivery on some scuba tanks we've rented and some rental kayaks. We have to remind ourselves a lot that here, we're on island time. So an hour very well could be all day. So we're looking for things to do while we wait.

Kathy got the oven ready to use. Most boaters hardly ever use their ovens. They cook on the stove or BBQ but few people we've run into like to use the oven. That's because boat ovens are notorious for not cooking evenly. But we've got two things going for us: One-We like baked goodness and TWO: Kathy knows how to man handle an oven and make it cook things right!

She makes a metal and tinfoil contraption...

...and puts it on the bottom rack:

and ta-da! We've got ourselves an oven to bake cakes!

Mark and I took the best warm fresh-water showers over at the Marina. We know those are sometimes few and far between when your cruising. The $3 it cost for two showers was well worth it. We'll be taking a lot of salt water showers off the back of the boat after we leave, so the pay showers were a welcome splurge.

Then I labeled the boat sides. It's a little tradition (mostly of mine) to name the different sides of the boat. On a catamaran, since there's two hulls we're often referring to which side something-er-other were looking for is on. It gets a little tiring saying "Starboard" or "Port" when you're telling someone the fresh towels or the SPF can be found on the "starboard" side all the time. Back on "One Life" we had a little episode where one side got a little stinkier than the other, due to issues with the boat's plumbing. I began lovingly referring to it as "The French Side".

At that time, we happened to be moored in St. Martin. It's a little island that has two very distinct countries residing on it. There's a french side and a Dutch side. And so began our naming of the sides of our boat. Mark and I lived on the french side and the Williams were over on the dutch side. And since you're always looking for entertainment while at sea, we spent a lot of time making fun of each others side.

This time around, since we're sailing in the Virgin Islands--some American territories and some British territories, I decided to name the boat sides again.
I just had to.

Our family chose the American side--mostly because I could think of endless ways to harass our British neighbors Keith and Kathy.

Next up we decided the crew needed tattoos! This is when we learned that Chloe is an expert tattoo artist. Who knew?