Tales of a Castaway

We took our first "big" trip last weekend, cruising to Bay St. Louis on Friday morning and returning on Sunday morning.  It was literally the most fun ever, and I am proud to say my girl handles 1.5 ft seas with ease.  A little spray over the bow just made it that much more fun.  I got to see places I've never been before and got to practice some of my "rules of the waves".  Channels are important.  What's even better is that the updated GPS card worked perfectly and matched up to the paper charts so I know I can trust it.  And it's depths.  Because drafts happen.  We watched a tug turn up mud. Before we left, I went to the store for provisions (sandwich meat, bread, cheese, rum and juice.  The necessities.)  This charm was on the door of the store: Dragons are lucky. Our friends Kris and Chuck joined us for both the trip out and back again.  Thank God for them, because, despite an incident I'll tell you about later, without them I think we

I read this article this weekend and chuckled, while ruefully acknowledging just how accurate this list is.  Don't get me wrong, I don't get to live aboard just yet and I count the minutes until I can, but still.  This list applies and has me motivated to chime in on each of the applicable topics.  Here you go.  A gift, or a series of gifts, from me to you. 1) Sometimes, it's going to get gross .  Wellllll ok.  So on Saturday night, we went to bed in the aft cabin and flipped on the a/c.  Within a few moments it started to smell really nasty.  Like funk and bilge and must and I don't want to think about what else.  But we were tired, so we threw some lemon oil into the bilge and fell asleep, vowing to look at it the next day.  The next day was yesterday, and Rick did some exploring.  And found that our blackwater tank had overflowed. Let that sink in for a minute. Our shit tank overflowed. Yes, there is a warning light.  It appears to not work.  No, we haven

When we bought the boat, the big thing was, will we use it as much as it deserves to be used, or will it waste away, waiting for our attention.  I think we silently agreed that we would never let that happen.  The cap goes aboard very nearly every single day, and I am on board at least five days a week.  More so, now that the small mate is in Georgia for a few weeks. We have had a number of outings with friends here and there since we got her, too.  This weekend was a new record for that though, and was so fun. At my work, we have a book club that meets monthly.  We read a book and then get together and eat lunch and talk about the book.  I got to pick for May's book (to be discussed in June) and chose an Agatha Christie book.  The book had an unfortunate original name (with a word that rhymes with "chigger") but is now called "And Then There Were None."  Decent enough, and features a boat/island, so it was fun to invite the ladies to lunch on the aft deck wh

Two weekends ago, I had five days off of work in a row.  You would think that would equate to much boat time... but not so much, sadly.  We had three gigs during those five days, and we were busy.  Really freaking busy.  It was, also, my birthday weekend, so I was both busy and spoiled  during that stretch of time. We did stay on board on Wednesday night, a night with a lot of wine resulting in me, apparently, demanding we watch The Bodyguard.  I am certain the boys were not upset when I couldn't get the Wifi to work.  Worked fine the next morning, natch.  Probably sabotage.  I can't blame them. I didn't even go on board again until the following Sunday evening.  We finally found a few minutes to relax and did so with great pleasure.  Nothing beats the boat life. Fortunately, last weekend was a different story.  First mate C-Luv went to Georgia on Saturday for four weeks with his father, but I was distracted by my friend John, who wanted to go fishing.  Note that our

Last weekend, our town hosted the official ribbon-cutting and grand opening of its marina, which is right in the middle of town, by a park.  It's also, conveniently, a five minute cruise up the bayou from our dock.  Same bayou.  So that was thoughtful of them.  Since Rick doesn't work during the day, most days, he had the opportunity to bring the boat up-bayou for the ceremony.  The result is a lot of pictures of our little dancy butt boat in the media, including a nice one with the (current) mayor: Photo bombing the mayor Cheesing for the ribbon cutting The bigger boat behind us gets much less attention   Pretty girl The whole marina is really nice, although it is a feat to get up on the deck from the low floating docks.  We have a step stool on board (it's blue, and you can barely see it in that last picture above) so that helps. That event was on Friday, and was, sadly, our only boat time on Friday.  Usually we (at least try to) sleep aboard on Fr

One of my biggest complaints - one of my only complaints - about my pretty boat has been the stereo.  While a decent brand (Sony, I think), and while it works fine, it is old.  It didn't have an aux jack.  And there wasn't a 12v outlet near enough for me to get one of those broadcasty thingees so I could broadcast my music  through the sound system.  I have a few portable bluetooth speakers but the sound system and speakers on the boat are on point and I hate to override those with crappy little speakers.  The only option is this - time to buy a new stereo. So I did!  My kid installed it for me last night.  In a few short days (when I'm not at work), there will, FINALLY, be showtunes playing through the system. Or at least not random country.  Which is fine, don't get me wrong.  But we need a little diversity. In other news, a storm is threatening to come up through the gulf this week, but I'm not worried.  For one thing, I think it's going to stay way Eas