The Forced Slow Down

Words of the week……adjustment & patience. Just imagine… 6 people and 13 hockey bags of stuff in a 42X21 foot area, we have stuff and people everywhere. Needless to say we have some adjusting to do with a lot of patience thrown in. Kevin has been on his own in China for 3 weeks and as one of the guys from work puts it “You are going to go insane in the first month.” (By the way, thanks to the guys from Kevin’s office who got together and purchased him a Speedo, sunglasses, and a book, I will be posting pictures) With excited kids under our heels, who have 100 other things to do other than schooling and trying to get 'tings' done on Caribbean time we are definitely having to make a few adjustments.

As the pictures show our kids have taken up a new and exciting past time… Ocean fishing. We have fishing rods made out of everything in sight; sticks, water bottles, hands… They have found that muscles picked off of the side of the pier works good as bait, but leftover chicken, although a little costly, is just as good and much easier.

Within no time, off the back of the boat, we had caught what we think to be a permit fish. We later learned that the locals catch these fish and simply throw them into a frying pan for a tasty treat.

On Tuesday morning we hired a guy to show us how to clean and wax the hulls of the boat.

Shawn and Tyler hit it off and Tyler is now enrolled in Shawn's Karate Kid training program (Wax on - Wax off).

In the afternoon, Dad had some work and waiting to do on the boat so the kids and I went to the beach just a dinghy ride away to spend the afternoon on Hogg Island.

It wasn’t long before the kids had made a friend, 9 year old Adam from Portugal who has lived his entire life aboard a sail boat.

Adam took Cole for a ride aboard his sail dinghy with Kiana chasing close behind almost keeping up with her long legs and flippers.

Some locals showed up to have a bar-b-que of Conch soup and a fish fry, they just happened to be frying the same fish that the kids were catching off the back of the boat, except it took them about 5 minutes to catch 10 of these fish right on the beach with nothing but some line, a hook and fresh conch for bait. Needless to say we are looking for Conch to use as bait.

We are currently staying at a Marina called Clarkes Court Bay Marina where the owner, Bob, is originally from Toronto. On different nights of the week they have theme get togethers at the Marina Bar (yes the kids are allowed in which they absolutely love) On Saturday night we joined in on the pot luck supper and Karaoke night and visited with lots of other boaters, it was fun. Tonight they are having hamburgers and fries for 10 EC a person which is $3.70 Canadian (math class at its best) and more importantly for Kevin a dollar off drinks.