Tuesday – Day 3 – Another whirlwind of an action packed day. Non stop activity in the full heat and humidity. Set wake-up alarms for before school bus time (promised kids it was the only day!!)…..time to move from Dad’s house to Amel. Arrived by 8 am to see her “on the hard”. Owners Reid and Rheta store the boat on land during hurricane season. Today was the day to “splash” the boat!!
After so much hard work by Mike and Reid in the boat yard inNovember, she was ready to go. After climbing that huge ladder up to the deck, I was very grateful for all their hard work and that the kids and I were NOT a part of it! Can’t imagine the heat, humidity, no A/C, bugs…..and then while on the hard boats have no working toilets, no sinks, no running water. It’s not very pleasant. Brought back memories ofMandolin (Mike and I worked 14hr days for 6 weeks straight before we departed our previous trip).
We happily explored the boat and then looked forward to watching the travel-lift strap under Amel’s belly and in no time had her ‘flying’ in the air on the way to the water. After they lower her down, Mike does a dash around the inside of the boat to inspect all the thru-hulls and ensure nothing leaking….then the straps are released and Amel is on her own in the water!
That was done by 10:30am…then the hard work began. The sails had to be put on (has to be down in the water – boatyard doesn’t allow you to climb the mast while on the hard). All sails are stored inside during hurricane season so they have to reattached and then re-furled. It was a hot sweaty job in the full sun (and sometimes sun/showers) that my Dad helped Mike with while I attempted to make sense of the chaos inside the boat once we dumped all our bags, clothes, boat schooling books (30lbs of them!) and all the food I had been buying.
The realities of life on a boat in a hot humid non air conditioned place became apparent as both children wilted and melted for the afternoon – both physically and emotionally. We had some good highs and some impressive lows too! I was very impressed with them for about an hour they eagerly opened of various school projects and got to work doing different assignments, happily helping each other while I got endless cans of food organized. There is some hope!
Bedtime was a challenge (first we had to find a bed under all the bags!)…then we realized how the boat holds it’s heat…even though it was70 outside it was still 85 inside. 2 hot sticky children were not falling asleep….but then the rain storm from the cold front arrived. Perfect timing…2 naked children ran into the cockpit to cool themselves off in fresh rain….finally off to bed they went…late at 8:30pm…but asleep and as comfortable as can be.
That wraps up a busy day. It’s bedtime!
Fun Afloat 