Ada's boat blog

Location: apartment in Sint Maarten Hello! Things are going well. I've started settling into life here. I've made friends with the ladies running the local corner store. The boss's name is Lovely and I speak to her in English, Hong is a cashier and I speak to her in a mix of English and terrible Mandarin. Lovely and Hong speak to each other in Cantonese. Lovely has told me that I look like "a handsome young boy" and Hong has told me that I look fifteen. They sell cheap fresh vegetables and have an excellent selection of Oreo's. It's a great place. A week or two ago, Fly's mother had given me some chai. Unfortunately, we ran out and the Chinese place didn't stock any, so on Wednesday Anna and I decided to go to Carrefour to pick some up. Jean had a medical appointment at 10am in Phillipsburg and offered to drop us off on the way there. At 10:05, he dinghied into Lagoonies, where his car was kept. With him was his friend who was still drunk from the ...

Location: an apartment near Lagoon Marina, Sint Maarten Hi. It's been awhile. Here are some paragraphs in some order about some individuals and events. Two Wednesday nights ago, we had our last Wednesday night party on the boat before hauling her out of the water. I received an hour-long lesson about how to properly sharpen knives. The people giving the lesson were Bridget, a professional chef, and Ryan, whose resume includes sous-chef, air force veteran, professional archer, rave lighting designer, and personal assistant. I also learned that my friend Bryce, a data scientist, grew up on a farm and used to do activities such as throwing hay bales. Other notable party guests included Kit Kat, a very friendly pit bull, and Leo the Technobaby. Nika made an impromptu decision to join a boat going to the Dominican Republic. She left a week after meeting the crew at a bar. They had numerous issues regarding crew legalities and left a day later than planned. Apparently she made it there ...

Location: Lagoon Marina, Sint Maarten Today the boat is full of activity making carrot cake with Fly, getting our windows redone (they were leaking) and the rigging is being loosened to be able to take out and service the genoa furler. If I die mid-post, I'll blame it on the mast falling. I've had a mast fall on me two years ago, but that was a small dinghy one. This one might hurt a little more. It's been a fun, productive week. First off, I forgot to mention that we have a new roommate. Nika is a sailor from Slovenia and was looking for a place to stay for a bit, so she currently lives on the couch. She likes walking around more than taking the dinghy, so we've explored some of the streets around the lagoon. It was during one of these excursions that I bought a funky pair of shorts with flowers on them. I un-stitched the tassels though; tassels are a bit too funky for me. Later that day (Wednesday), we got our first covid vaccines! It took going to three different loc...