Boat life 101

Well here I am again... Tonight I will be writing about what we've learned thus far in the trip. I think what I'll do is make a list and then write about the details of a few. Well here it goes. I've learned to tie numerous types of ropes, ALWAYS wear sunscreen, do your school work when told to do so, make sure all your hatches are closed or else all of your belongings will be soaked, use wifi when available, use the smallest amount of water possible, the sea is a great and friendly bathtub, the responsibility of being dinghy captain, when something goes wrong (like a rip in the dinghy) Don't worry maan ! Without working out every day you will become very out of shape very quickly, friends are such a crucial thing in life, eat well when good food is available, be ready to wake up in the middle of the night with rain pouring through the window above your bed, ALWAYS have a light at the front of the dinghy or else the coast guard will pull you over, don't smoke cigarettes because they smell like poop, use proper English when speaking with someone you don't know, DON'T EXPECT PEOPLE WHO ARE MOT FROM AMERICA TO ACT LIKE AN AMERICAN, sometimes things won't always go as planned.. Well I could go on for hours about other things that I've learned but I don't want to bore you anymore than I already have (; So let's start with the tying of ropes. Ropes, ropes, and more ropes. Ropes are probably the most essential thing right under God and water. You use them to lift the main sail, the jib, tie the tramp to the boat, tie the escape hatch closed so that water doesn't come spraying into the kitchen and many more uses. We have learned many types of knots on this trip. We can tie knots to the fenders, tie a knot so that the dinghy doesn't go flying into the ocean... Knots and ropes are used everyday and they also take a toll on your hands. By the time I get back my hands are going to feel like rocks. Another learning experience is showering. Back in the states we shower everyday and don't think about how much water we use. But when your on a boat and all you have is 200 gallons of fresh water it goes fast if you take a thirty minute shower. But sadly your shower usually consists of about two whole minutes of fresh water. But luckily Cody and I have figured out that salt water is just as good as fresh water. It may not be as nice but you'll take what you got when there's the biggest bathtub in the world right outside your window. So ya throw on some compression shorts, jump in the ocean to get nice and wet, soap up and then jump off the top of the boat just to make sure you got all the soap off. It's probably the most adrenaline I've ever had when showering. So not to brag or anything, but I'm kinda the captain of the dinghy. No big deal (; but for those of you that don't know what a dinghy is. Well its like a small boat with a motor strapped to the back. And ours is about 13x5 feet. It's certainly not the biggest one out there but she gets the five of us where we need to go. Me being the dinghy captain I got the honor of naming her. So I named her Bessie. And she is the perfect woman for me. She starts when we need her to start, she runs like a machine (see what I did there?) and she doesn't complain when she hauls our 700 pound family from our boat to the docks. But enough about Bessie, let's get to the good stuff. An interesting story to come later involving the coast guard but now I'll talk about the Regatta. The Regatta is a huge sail boat race around the island of St. Maarten. This race involves a few hundred boats of all shapes and sizes. Catamarans, monohulls, trimarans all in various lengths from 20 to 100 feet long. This year it was sponsored by Heineken and I don't think I've ever seen so many people drink so much beer ! But since we were in the harbor of where the race was ending we decided to stay here for the week race and watch the end of the race. On Sunday night when it was all over we went into shore and witnessed the medals and award ceremony. After it was over there were a few DJ's who played some music to which everyone was dancing to. I personally did not enjoy having my space bubble intruded upon so many times by complete strangers. But if you block that out and have a good time then it was a fabulous party. After the DJ's time was over the Grammy winning (in the 70's) Commodores came onto stage. Before they started their first song I could sense that my ears were about to witness badness. They didn't sound too completely terrible, but when we saw the five pounds of makeup combined with dance moves that look like what Pop (my grandpa) does we knew we had to leave. Not trying to insult your dance moves Pop but even you would have laughed at these guys. Their intentions were good but I don't think it came out the way that they wished that it would. But here comes the interesting story that I promised you earlier. As we're we're leaving the Commodores were still playing and there was still lots of light from shore and also from the moon we didn't need a light up front of Bessie. So we were cruising as fast as Bessie could take us (which isn't too fast) when the coast guard proceeded to shine there VERY bright spotlights at us. I was already temporarily deaf from the volume of the speakers from the concert I was clueless that they were actually trying to talk to me about something. Dad finally looked at me, told me to turn Bessie off, which I refused because she would more than likely to start again. So I risked being boarded by the coast guard and I just put her in neutral. I'm a rebel, Inknow. And I can assure you that I was a little intimadated by the fact that there were about nine of them, all carrying light machine guns and a few extremely bright spotlights. But when my dad heard what they said he just looked At me and told me that I needed a light. They continued to stare at me as I struggled to pull Cody's tiny LED flashlight out of my pocket and hand it to cody at the front of the dinghy. We watched each other for a few more seconds until Cody started telling me in his raised volume voice that we can go now. This whole time I was still temporary deaf to the fact that they were still trying to talk to me. So I put her in gear and we slowly made our way back to the boat. We are currently back in Gustavia, St Barth's for one night. We will pull up anchor early Tuesday so we can get to Statia (St Eustatia) early enough to hike a volcano. Well on dads iPad this looks like an extremely long post so I'll end it here. I'm learning things every day about who I am and what the world is like outside of the USA. It's an amazing trip and I'm having oh so much fun. So I'll leave you with this, quoted from a man we were talking to last night at dinner, "You cannot expect people who are not from America to act like an American." They won't talk the same as you, they won't walk or dress the same as you, and most of the time they will be much much nicer than you. There's no competing with the French, Dutch, carribean manners. -William.