So the Yacht Harbor Grande in St. Thomas has apparently decided that “lime” is a good verb.  I don’t think they meant to advertise that shoppers could “apply a sticky, caustic solution containing calcium carbonate as fertilizer.”  But who knows?  Maybe they’ve found a way to make that fun?  I mean, how many times can one go to a beach?

Mel has decided that “to lime” should also mean: to do anything without a schedule, especially those things that cause one to sweat and would make sense with steel pan drum background music.  The Burnetts have lately done such things, as seen in the pics below.

Our “liming” ended when we finally had a schedule to keep.  We had to do the dreaded “haul out.”  We put two and two together and realized that the slow seawater leak into our port engine room from a faulty stern light installation likely contributed to our corroded butt connector and subsequent engine fail.  Basically, Marvin had “swamp ass.”  Google it.  We also had a problem with faulty saildrive boots.  Mel does not know what the purpose of those things are, but who can pass up an opportunity to get new boots, under warranty?  Big, black, rubber boots.  Sexy.

So off we went back to Tortola, chugging there directly into the wind and current under motor to make our scheduled haulout.  So unlimey!  Oh wait, a “Limey” is a Brit, and here we are back in the British Virgin Islands!  The Limeys have made us unlimey!  Criminy!

Hauling out is just…unnatural.  Imagine your “land home” floating in the water.  It’s just wrong.  Mel’s stomach felt a lurch while they were walking around on the boat once it was on land.  She was convinced it was moving and about to fall off of its blocks.  Her vestibular system was messing with her, causing “negative afterimages.”  Marvin should not be that…still.  It was like he was being anesthetized for a procedure.  Fortunately Greg is quickly learning how to be a great boat surgeon!

Unfortunately, our planned fixes to Marvin had to be done in two days, as the Travelift capable of lifting our boat was scheduled for its own maintenance.  So Mel is writing this after homeschooling the kids for four hours in a hotel (Kiss your kids’ teachers!  Hard on the lips!) while Greg slaves away at the Nanny Cay Boatyard under the gun on the hot boat.

After this, we’ll be ready to go back to our G&T’s.  With extra lime!

We are in America again…sort of.  Being in a place better connected to the US than others has allowed us to appreciate what we have missed these last six months.  You can learn a lot about America by not being in it.

Such as things like this: AMERICANS ARE THE BEST SHELF-STOCKERS IN THE WORLD.  (Well, the Caribbean, anyway.)  The Caribbean grocery stores we have previously encountered would have only one brand of the desired item (if they had it at all,) and you could not count on them having the same item at the same place on the shelf next week.  The logistics and cost of importation to the middle of nowhere is overwhelming!  Also, presentation and cleanliness were generally not prioritized, with a few notable exceptions (like Carulla in Colombia…aaah!)  Apparently, when your country reaches a certain economic status, energy can be spent on seemingly trivial things, like organizing products by shape and color, and overstocking just for presentation’s sake.  While surprisingly soothing, Americanized shelf-stocking is clearly wasteful.  But boy, it is pretty to see thousands of different kinds of pens all in a row!  Aaaah!  Pens are so easy to stow!  Uh-oh.  We have too many pens now.

And this: AMERICANS MAKE GOOD DAMN BARBEQUE!  Mel just indulged in chicken wings and cornbread at The Smokin’ Rooster.  Sorry, Jamaica, but your jerk doesn’t come close!  Not enough sugar!   AMERICANS DON’T MIND LICKING THEIR OWN FINGERS!

And this: AMERICANS LOVE SIGNAGE!  The more words, the better!  A good sign makes all of those stupid, specific rules okay.  After being in countries where they actually let you walk to the edge of a precipice without even a fence or a traffic cone in your way, the signage here is a bit…overwhelming.

And this: AMERICA IS SPLIT INTO MULTIPLE GEOGRAPHICAL CHUNKS OF DISTINCT CULTURE, WHICH IS AWESOME.  St. Thomas has a vibe all of its own.  I mean, look at the cars here!  No one gives a crap about them!  We rented a car for a couple of days and, alarmed when we saw body damage before taking the keys, took a lot of pictures so that we wouldn’t be falsely accused later (which has happened plenty in the States.)  The nice Budget guy walked around the car with us and eventually said, “Look, I’ll just put “all scraped up” on this form and we won’t worry about it.”  It turns out that we ended up with one of the nicest cars on the island, according to a guy hanging out in the parking lot at Budget Marine, anyway.  Mel has entertained herself with all sorts of theories as to the popularity of the banged-up car, such as: why waste money on appearances when some idiot driving on the right is just around the corner anyway?  Maybe the only auto body guy on the island is overpriced, St. Thomas gets a deal on wrecked cars, the hills are too steep, the parking lots are too small, driving on the left when the driver sits on the left is difficult, or showing off an unscratched car comes across as culturally…pubey?  Or maybe, just maybe, she has found the one island where everyone’s daughter REALLY DOES need an eye operation.

Of course, our dinghy and our boat are no longer scratch-free, so I guess the Burnetts have finally gone native!

Here are some pics that don’t fit with the theme of the post, but who cares!  YeeHaw! On Monday we took the dinghy to Buck Island during cruise ship lunch hour (11-1) and had a blast snorkeling a wreck and a crystal-clear bay filled with turtles.  We concluded our awesome day by watching an outdoor movie on Honeymoon Beach on Water Island.  And, OF COURSE, Mel would not have taken her kids had she known it was the new, R-rated Vacation movie rather than the classic she grew up with.  So if you were sitting behind us last night, we were not strangling our children in the sand; we were just trying to protect them from “adult themes.”  SO AMERICAN!

So the Burnetts are hangin’ out in St. Thomas.  Cruisers with kids (who give a shit about homeschooling) sometimes just…hang out.  We have finally resumed our boat school after a six week hiatus and things are going surprisingly well.  There have been minimal emotional breakdowns (from both the kids and the parents.)  And hell, let’s not be sanctimonious…we are still in St. Thomas because we are waiting on some packages of parts from Amazon.  Amazon delivers to St. Thomas!  (But slowly!)  It turns out that “waiting for parts” is a good opportunity to educate your kids!

Slowing down a bit has also given us an opportunity to reflect on what we are doing out here.  And to take on chores to prevent corrosion.  At the six month post-launch mark, well, mainly we are preventing corrosion.  “Stainless” steel, apparently, only lasts six months.  So at sunset, Greg scrubs corrosion from the radar mount while Mel reflects on the state of modern medicine.  Such occupations are equally productive.  Meaning futile.

Of course, Mel should be more optimistic.  At this very moment, Richard Branson is only a few 10’s of nautical miles away on Necker Island, taking successful corporate entrepreneurs through obstacle courses and shit.  Maybe that is the solution?  Doctors need more obstacle courses!  No?  Sigh.  Doctors are not record company or airline employees.  They are just…different.  And that is the whole problem.  Great!  Another problem Mel hasn’t solved.

The last few weeks have been fun but humiliating.  In front of various guests, the Burnetts have managed to foul a prop because of their own error – twice.  A beloved swim ladder caught in a mooring ball pennant (because we forgot to raise it) and bent.  (Note the use of passive voice.  Passive voice is helpful when one does not want to assign blame.  I’m talking about you, “The Stupid.”)  Wave heights have turned out to be 3 feet higher than predicted, producing nausea and fear in our guests.  For perfectionistic professionals, all of these factors out of their control, and all of these opportunities to make a time-consuming mistakes, are frustrating.  You are super-smart and want to impress a client?  Trust me, DO NOT TAKE THEM SAILING!

Ego totally deflated, Mel has turned to what she used to be pretty good at—neurology.  She must keep up her skills, because clearly neurology is the ONLY thing she is good at! Certainly it isn’t tying bowlines, or assisting in dousing the ParaSailor (Mel would like to add this enigmatic aside: FFFF UUUUU ParaSailor!  I DO NOT LIKE YOU!!!!!  Show me a woman who likes her spinnaker, and I will show you someone delusional!  Or with eyes in the back of her head!)  However, she became worried after she was forced to take a nap, exhausted, after spending 3.5 hours registering and booking flights and hotels for the American Academy of Neurology meeting in April in Vancouver.  Crap, she thinks to herself, I used to do this after work???  Have I fallen this far?

But Mel wakes up the next morning and does her Jillian Michaels workout in her hull.  And she puts on her shorts, which don’t quite fit because she has lost weight since she started this.  And then she goes upstairs and educates her children, quizzing them on Lord of the Flies and Alice in Wonderland, now knowing that Allie can’t spell but remembers everything she hears, and Tommy reads at three times her speed but needs classical music to focus.  Maybe after school the kids jump in the water, playing, “King of the Kayak.”  They have fellow cruisers over for happy hour, share conspiracy theories about Donald Trump, and then Mel prepares a meal that they provisioned for three days ago, by wheeling the Burley cart over to the Pueblo grocery store down the road from the dinghy dock.  “Sorry,” they say to the middle aged folks who look into the cart, expecting a cute baby.  “No baby, just food.”  At sundown, they watch (and hear) the cruise ships depart from Charlotte Amalie, googling their history on their spotty internet.  “The Carnival Glory can take about 3000 passengers and has ‘Fun Ship 2.0’ upgrades!”  Mel swats a mosquito, pushing thoughts of chikungunya and zika virus out of her head.  That night, she puts fresh Neosporin on all of her cuts, remembering to turn off the generator before she goes to bed.

And as she dreams, she thinks of this:  As humiliating as cruising can be, it is SO.MUCH.BETTER.THAN.DICTATING!

The Burnetts are spending Christmas on a mooring ball in Little Lameshur Bay, St. John, US Virgin Islands.  We are the only ones here at the moment.  We don’t have any snow, but we sure have rain.  I’m sure “I’m Dreaming of a Wet Christmas” would be a great hit down here.

Christmas in the tropics, to be honest is, well, a bit lame.  None of the traditions make sense down here, especially on a boat.  This is a particularly challenging location.  Our paper Alpine Christmas Village almost blew away when a squall came up before we could close our doors.  There are no stockings up, as Mel stored all of the socks in the bilge five months ago and now she can’t find them.  There is certainly no fireplace and no roasted chestnuts.  Couldn’t find chestnuts in the stores anyway.  If Santa came by and managed to not get stuck in a hatch, we’d probably find a saltwater-soaked, sweat-stained, fur-lined velvet hat on the floor Christmas morning, with a note attached saying, “Just keep it.”   Anyway, if his reindeer landed on our topsides they would slide ride off, bounce once on the trampoline, and plunge into the water with a terrific splash.  We would all awaken abruptly, shouting, “Whale!”

However, halfway through this Christmas Mel realized that her proportions were all off.  The winter holiday traditions are part of it, but the makeup of Christmas (for us less religious folk) is more like 90% Family, Charity, Goodwill, and Food, and 10% Creative Distractions Because Winter Sucks.  With family visiting, Wi-Fi for online donations, and a 10 pound turkey that actually fit in our oven, we were able to take care of most of the 90%, with the exception of some notable family absences.  So Merry Christmas, from Christmas Island!

Of course, because we have not had good Wi-Fi for a while, Mel is a bit behind on the blog.  So here is a “bonus post” on the days leading up to Christmas, which I wrote while at Soper’s Hole Marina in Tortola, BVI:

We have had a whirlwind time the last few days.  Mel just typed the word, “whirlwind” while a huge gust of wind blew down on her from the mountains of Tortola, shaking the new hammocks Greg strung up in the aft cockpit.  Cool.  Mel will try that again.  Whirlwind.  Whirlwind.  Holy crap it worked!

Mel had a lovely birthday on the 19^th, consisting of two dives in the morning followed by a great meal with her family at the Cooper Island resort, with cake and presents.  Mel wore a lot less clothing on this birthday than in prior years.  Think about it; it is not as exciting as it sounds.  This was a significant birthday for any nerd: 42.  If you don’t know why, well, then, you must not be a nerd.

Now officially 42, Mel dove off of the boat with Greg and explored the wrecked RMS Rhone just off of Salt Island.  The ocean gave us the quick version of the tour due to a monstrous current, and Mel and Greg found themselves holding hands to stay together, flying over the coral-encrusted stern 60 feet down in 10 seconds like Superman and Lois Lane.  During our flight we spied one giant rock lobster that attacked us in slow motion, waving his 3 ft-long antennae and his juicy tail at us.  Maybe one day we will meet again, Rocky…

We then spent a couple blissful days anchored in Little Harbor on Peter Island on flat, lake-like water, doing lake-like things like kayaking and floating without choking on waves.  This was the first time we had to tie our stern to a tree with a line – and the first time Mel cleared a fouled prop.  We will do it a different way next time.  Sea stories.

The contrast in atmosphere was significant when we next picked up a mooring ball on Norman Island, supposed inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, which Mel made Tommy read over the summer.  The wind was quite noisy spilling down from the mountains, capable of drowning out the ruckus at Willy T.’s, the floating restaurant where you can get a free T-shirt if you jump from the roof naked.  Unfortunately, no one onboard has a T-shirt now.  Mel is afraid of heights.

Our new game on board is called, “Spot the charterers.”  We played this in the Bight.  Usually, at anchor these folks have not zipped up their sailbag and their mainsail is still halfway up the mast.  Their booms flop high and wildly in the wind.  If they do hang clothes on the line, it is attractive and bright “resort wear,” towels, and bikinis, not UV-faded T-shirts and Tilley hats. One can spot the charterers early in the morning in their dinghies, retrieving the noodles and cushions that blew overboard overnight.  Finally, many have forgotten how to do a proper cleat hitch or bowline, so they do very interesting things with their dinghy painters.  Ah, the bliss of having no downstream responsibility for your actions…

And so at Norman Island, surrounded by about 40 charter boats, we were alerted while dining at Willy T’s of a rogue dinghy.  Oh dear, poor charterer, we thought, watching the dingy drift randomly in the bay.  They must not have secured it properly.  Then suddenly, “Wait a minute!  That’s our dinghy!” came out of Greg’s mouth, as we spotted Susie’s distinctive console and non-ABness, rarities around here.  Fortunately some nice folks at Willy T.’s rescued it for us.  We will never know what happened, but we have a better bond with the charterers now.  But zip up your sailbags, people!  That sun is harsh!

And so we decided to rest a bit at a marina on Tortola.  Amongst the cute pink and purple shops lining the marina, Allie found some chartering kids to practice telling her own “sea stories” to, and we entertained some Havanese-owning fellow sailors with Glenfiddich and Greg’s knowledge of WWII.  And that is how we rest in the BVI’s.