Challenges and Triumphs

**Please note:  The primary purpose of this ‘blog’ is to provide a journal of our Trismic adventure that can eventually be printed out with photos, etc. so I apologize if it does not comply with standard ‘blog’ criteria.  I have a feeling moving forward it will be a lot more photo journalistic in nature than journalistic.  After all, a picture says a thousand words!!…and writing takes too long.

Bless me blog followers for I have sinned.  It has been about a month and a half since my last blog post…

Wow, where to start?  So much has happened and we have learned SO much!!  A few weeks ago I got an email from a good friend asking how we were adjusting to living on board.  She must have caught me on a bad day because the general feel of the email was that everything was a challenge – cooking, groceries, showering or doing ANYthing independently, really, because we – the kids and I – had no idea how to even exist on boat, in a foreign country.  We didn’t even know how to use the loo!!

But the following day we had a real shower on shore (as opposed to a sponge bath or no shower at all in an effort to conserve water and power) and we did laundry so we had fresh crisp sheets to sleep in and somehow everything seemed better.

It was then, in that blissful state of cleanliness, that I began to realize that although we had had many challenges, we had also had several triumphs to celebrate.  For example, the ice box at the top of our bar sized fridge iced over and needed thawing.  At home, this would not have been a problem because I would have just put all of our food into the second fridge in the basement to keep it cold while the small freezer thawed.  Without that luxury, it wasn’t as easy.  We had to eat down all of our food for days to a reasonable amount then I had to hop in the dingy, drive to shore, pick up two big bags of ice, lug them back to the dingy and then unload them out of the dingy once back at the boat (which isn’t quite as easy as loading and unloading a car because both the dingy and the boat are moving targets).  Anyway, the ice went into a cooler followed by the food and I sat around and mopped up the water as the ice thawed from the ice box for several hours.  Although the task seems pretty straight forward,  I had never done it before and accomplished it without breaking anything else or hurting anyone so it was definitely a triumph, albeit a small one.  Hurray!

My next small triumph involved a toilet that stopped working.  Without going into detail, just say that one of the kid’s toilets stopped working at an inopportune time.  Neil asked me to prep it for fixing and since I’d rather do that than fix it, I got to work.  How hard could it be?  I used to change diapers, right?…gag.  It was a job that I hope to never do again BUT I got it done – so again, another triumph.

Neil has had a few triumphs too.  The first day we tried out the watermaker, a hose burst and water was flying everywhere into the bilge.  Luckily he was there monitoring it and shut it down.  After some banging, fumbling around and a few colourful words he had it fixed!  YES!!  Also, after being shown how to do it on our port engine, Neil managed to tighten the fan belt on the starboard engine to make the alternator work more efficiently for charging our batteries.  Wow!  Another triumph!!  The next project – replacing the fan belts (the need for this has nothing to do with Neil having just tightened the belts).  We’ll let you know how it goes!

All to say that yes, it has been an adjustment and there have been many challenges but without them we would never experience the triumphs.  In the next couple of years, I’m sure we will have a growing list of challenges but as the list gets longer, so will our list of triumphs and each one will undoubtedly make a good story.

In the meantime, here are some other things we have been up to in the past several weeks…

These mini-olympics were organized by a six year old Spanish boy.  He thought up the events and then made medals out of pounded and painted beer bottle caps for all thirty kids!  In one of the photos you can see the area that our boat is moored.

Here are the kids doing some of their daily chores…

Here are Nathan and Millie (and Neil) having some fun on the paddleboard.  Nathan likes to paddle around the bay visiting his buddies on other boats.

***News flash***- Rainbow loom has made a comeback!!…at least in our small corner of the world.

One day we went to a mango festival!  Yes, that’s right, mangoes everywhere!!  Mango curry, mango bread, mango pie, mango jam, mango chutney, mango ice cream, mango, mango, mango.  We picked up about twelve mangoes that day for about $1.50.

One of the big annual traditions in Grenada is Carnival.  Once a year, loads of scantily clad women (and some men) dance around in a parade to incredibly loud music.  Have a quick look at this video to get a better idea.  This parade was called “Pretty Mas”.  After arriving, I quickly learned that this “Mas” had nothing to do with church.  Millie has taken to dancing like these lovely feathered, bedazzled ladies, in the shower. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlAzexfbc_w

On another note, Nathan’s two year wish has come true.  He brought in food for the family in the form of a lane snapper caught right off the stern of the boat.  That night we enjoyed appies of lovely fish morsels with our sundowners.

Nathan also learned to knee board behind a friend’s boat.  I see a new purchase in our near future.  AND he got to have some tubing fun behind another friend’s dingy.  He is truly thriving.

He’s getting pretty comfortable in his knot tying too…

And, let me introduce “The Millies” – Millie (6) and Milly (6).  There are a lot of boats here from England, including Milly’s, and our Millie has started to have a little British accent.  Cute.

BUT, the best part of living on board is…

’till next time!!!