Ada's boat blog

Location: Antigua Damn, it's been a week. There have been good parts and there have been bad parts, but the main takeaways are that boats are great but bilges suck. The unfortunate reality of boat life is that every week you say goodbye to people. Last weekend, it was Flora's turn. She would fly to Miami to be flown afterwards by private jet to a private island in the Bahamas that she would co-manage. Talk about a sweet gig. We started her last day with an extravagant brunch. David and Kyle's dishes were served on plates the size of platters, and included four eggs, bacon, hash browns, an enormous serving of baked beans, and mushrooms. They finished almost all of it and went into a food coma almost immediately afterwards. After a long nap, we went to a local bar for all of Flora's friends to be able to make their goodbyes. Flora has many friends. There were at least twenty people spread out across several tables, with more arriving by the minute. Also, Bryce came back! ...

Location: Picadilly, Antigua Well folks, my time on Heaven's Door is over for now. Jem has invited me to visit him when he visits French Polynesia, but that's still in awhile. In the meantime, I have months' worth of memories of sailing, being, at anchor, and watching sunsets at sea. Jem has moved back into the boat! We moved everything over the course of two days. Unfortunately the rainy season had started, and those two days happened to be the most humid and disgusting ones of the week. I dearly missed the apartment's AC, but it was nice seeing the boat getting cleaned up and everything put in its proper place again, the exception being the ceiling boards, which are now in the hallway of the starboard hull. Anna and I left a few traces of our passing on the boat. We both filled in entries in Jem's crew book, in which every crew member writes at the end of their stay. Anna also left some notes on sail theory that she had tacked up, and I left a watergun that I had ...

Location: the apartment next to Lagoonies, Sint Maarten This time, I really need to keep this post short, because I only have an hour to write it. Of course, this is entirely my fault; I could have written it two days ago when I had an entire half day free, but I chose to watch four hours of TV instead. In my defense, the show was "Below Deck," which is a reality TV show about people working on a megayacht, so it was somewhat on-theme. Too dramatic, though; if it weren't filmed, half the crew would probably be fired by now. Heaven's Door is back in the water! The fiberglass work is done, the windows and hatches have been re-sealed, the engines have been replaced, Jem's nerved have been fried, the deck has been cleaned, and she looks absolutely beautiful! Of course, the engines had a few more problems, the replacement winches haven't arrived, and half of the ceiling is on the couch (they needed to access underneath), but she's doing great. Yesterday, as I t...