Sailing Ohana

Sometimes people think that living on a sailboat is a full-time vacation. That is incorrect. It is definitely a break from “regular life”, but most days it is a lot of work. Stopping at Emerald Bay Marina felt a little like an actual vacation. We went to a restaurant where the boys frolicked in the pool and ordered virgin piña coladas from the bar. We ate and drank with friends and borrowed their rental car for some errands. We did tons of (free!) laundry at the marina, and took long showers at the marina as well. None of these facilities are luxurious by most American expectations: The laundry only has one dryer that really works, the showers have intermittent water pressure, and the slip they had available for us did not have electricity. But it felt like a vacation nonetheless. We were reunited with our friends on Summerwind and the boys were thrilled to be running wild with them again. Their boys even slept over on our boat the last night.

We started doing the math and becoming aware of how soon we needed to get to St. Croix, and felt the pressure again to move on. It looked like there would be a weather window opening up soon. We had hoped and planned on Summerwind joining us for a bit as we made our way south, but they had a couple of broken lugs on their mainsail that couldn’t be fixed or replaced any time soon. We decided to stay at the marina for an extra day just so we could hang with them one (probably) last time in the Bahamas. We are hoping they will still be out here when we make our way back.  There were some very sad moments saying good-bye to our boat buddies. The cruising life is so full of wonderful connections and new friends, but it’s hard when we find ourselves saying good bye so often.