Life on the rock

Where to begin? We have been living here now for 9 months and we have both learned so much. We still have much to learn. Our first season of chartering may have been slow, but in my mind was a great success. All of our charters were great, minus one person who had too much to drink. We met some lovely people and hope to see some of them again in the future. In the meantime we are now dealing with hurricane season and what to do in the event of a storm. So far so good, nothing has come our way.

Long time, no see

So, where have I been you ask? Well, I am not much of a writer and I just sort of forgot about this whole thing. Until today when we were speaking to someone about advertising and he said to start a blog. Hmmm, I did that already, but it probably helps to actually write something on said blog, right? Well, we have been pretty busy lately. We have done somewhere around a dozen charters now, some of them paid, and some of them as an advertising tool. We have had so much fun on each and every one of them, it doesn't even seem like work to me. We are really debating at this point whether to continue doing the day sail thing or term charters. Everyone has an opinion and we are just trying to sort out everything. Term chartering sounds very interesting to me and we would get to explore so much more. The money we would make would be substantially more, but then so would the workload. I just don't know if I really want to work that hard. At this point, I do believe we are going to stick with the day sails and possibly do term charters in the future. We do have a couple that wants to move their boat down here, but before they do they want to come sailing with us for a week and see what it's like. So we will be taking a trip here soon to some neighboring islands to get an idea of where to go and what to do while they are visiting. Then I can get an idea of what a term charter would consist of also. Things are going very well aboard Hakuna Matata, I learn more and more each time we go out and I do believe I am getting the hang of this! This ship has such a rich history and I am just so happy to be a part of it now. Another dilemma we are facing now is what to do during hurricane season. Do we hang out here and hope for the best or do we sail down island? We have a plan of what to do and where to go if something comes this way so we could stick around and keep doing charters and working on the island. Another snag is I really want to go to the gorge in Washington in September and I am not sure how that is going to work. If we stay here, we can't both go because we can't leave the boat. It is entirely too expensive to take the boat out of the water and put it on the hard so that is not an option. So, I suppose we will keep on doing what we are doing and see how it plays out. We have time to make that decision. I will try to remember this is here and write more often! Goodnight for now.

So, our charters this weekend were both amazing!  We took a lovely couple, Mitch and Jennifer out on Saturday. She didn't even know how to swim, which we found out during our sail out to Christmas Cove. Kelly worked with her and she was such a trooper, but she wasn't comfortable in the water at all. Kelly almost had her, but she got a mouthful of water and she was done. So Mitch and I went out for a snorkel while Kelly and Jennifer hung out on the boat. She was satisfied that she attempted to snorkel and she was happy to just hang out on the boat and drink some rum drinks and get some sun.  On Sunday we took out a couple of sisters named Wendy and Melissa. They were also not too comfortable in the water. Kelly worked with both girls and they soon became acclimated and we snorkeled for quite some time. We saw a huge barracuda and some rays and lots of fish. All in all we had a great weekend. I hope that we can continue to gain business and actually make a living at this!!!  I am going to keep it short tonight, I am tired. I had to actually work today at Walgreens and I have to go back tomorrow. 

Good night

Our first charter!

So moving ahead to today, we finally have a paying charter! It's a little after 6am here and I am wide awake. Kelly has been up for a little while, but he is an early riser anyway. I on the other hand, am not. I like to sleep in and this new life generally allows me to do that. I can not sleep this morning, but I do have Alicia Key's song This Girl is on Fire stuck in my head. So there's that.
We took 4 people out last night over the Thatch Cay to see if we could find any whales. This is whale watching season and they travel through that area to breed.  No luck last night, but it was a beautiful sail. We came back in after dark and that was a little daunting. Trying to see the mooring and catching it with a headlamp on adds a little more drama, which I really don't need.
We are also planning on taking some of the bartenders and industry staff from Red Hook out on a sunset sail in the coming weeks. We are hoping that the people that see our boat and what we do will talk to their customers about us. 
Well, I need to go do some food prep and get ready for the day!

arrivederci :)

My first blog

So I have been told by several people to start a blog about my adventures here on the island.  I just wasn't sure I really had that much to say that people would be interested in, and maybe I don't. But, I have completely changed the direction of my life and maybe blogging can become part of that! 

Let me go back to the genesis of this new life. Back in February of 2012, Kelly and were planning a sailing trip with some friends.  We were going to charter a sailboat and go sailing to some beautiful ports and see amazing things. Then our friends backed out due to a sick dog :(  So we had to come up with a new plan. We looked for what seemed like forever to find the perfect destination, lets face it, there are so many places I want to go. It was difficult to pick one. We finally decided on a 2 week trip to a little heard of island called Bonaire that is renowned for the scuba diving. I had recently become certified and wanted to see what was out there! Anyway, long story short, we met Paul and Trish Ducker who were sailing around the world on their beautiful Oyster sailboat. I was intrigued to say the least. I said to Kelly, fuck it, let's buy a boat.  Most people that know me, know that I had worked at Walgreens for 21 years and I made a decent living, had just bought my own house and was pretty content with my life in Vegas. I was still too scared to actually go through with leaving all of that.  Then in March of 2013 my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer and my world came to a halt. I called my boss and explained to him what was going on in between sobs. You see, what was going on in my mind was that I had inventory coming up and it was almost Easter. I was actually wondering if I could leave. Bless his heart, he said "Dawn, go be with your mother."  I will never forget him for that. So I left the following day and spent 3 weeks with my mom and then she passed. It all happened so fast, I thought for sure that we were going to just find another doctor that would help her. She was too far gone and after spending the night with her in the hospital and speaking with her doctors, I knew that there was no treatment that could help her.  That night in the hospital I asked her if there was anything she wanted to do. She looked me straight in the eye and said, "yeah, there are a lot of things I want to do." And that was it, we didn't say another word about it, but that statement really hit home for me. My mom was only 62 years young and so full of life, that I still can't believe that she is gone. So these 2 events encouraged me to take a chance and quit the only real job that I have ever had, sell almost everything I owned, and move to an island to start a business. Kelly has been by my side throughout all of this and has joined me on this journey of a new life. 

Well, I think that is enough for a first entry.  Until next time, cheers :)