Back from the Lake

Even though I know I don't have to, I feel the need to apologize for the lack of posts as of late.  It's certainly not for a dearth of material as I have about a dozen half-written posts in my drafts folder.  The problem, my friends, is time.  I know I don't have to explain how that having a toddler and twinfants is probably the gold medal standard for time-suckage but there are just not enough hours in the day to do all that I want to do, and the few hours of quiet time I do get are spent drinking copious amounts of wine (joking...kind of).  Sigh. Time is a precious commodity, and lucky for us we've been spending it soaking up the last days of summer in style with our little munchkins and enjoying every minute of it.  Because the other funny thing about time?  It goes by so dang fast.

We just returned last night from another epic family vacation.  This time, we headed to Northern Michigan where we rented the most adorable teeny-tiny cottage (only slightly larger than our boat in square footage) on Lake Bellaire to spend time with Scott's family.  It was bliss.  Lake living is where it is at and Scott and I have put it out into the Universe that one day we will have a cozy cottage on a lake somewhere where our girls can spend the summers canoeing, paddle boarding, fishing, hiking, dinghy sailing, making s'mores around a campfire, collecting fireflies, skipping stones and - in general - being kids in the great outdoors.  I don't know what it is, but there is something special about waking up and walking out your back door to the morning sun glistening on a lake.  The fresh air, the cool morning mist, the chirping birds, the feel of dewy grass underfoot...  Not sure if it's like this for everyone - for some it might be mountains or forests or deserts - but for me being on the water is so peaceful and calming.   It's probably why I love living on a boat so much, the constant presence of water right at my doorstep.  Everything somehow seems more tolerable, more beautiful, more meaningful, more special, just more when I am close to water.  Life is better.  I love it.  I guess that's the true gift nature gives us and why it's so important to get out in it as often as we can.

So there's that.  I could go on and on, but the babies are stirring from their nap and so I'll just leave you with a few pictures that I think sum it up nicely.

Play Time: Let's Go Fly a (giant) Kite!

I've talked before about Scott's obsession with kiteboarding.  We both come from athletic backgrounds; he is a two-time Ironman, we both have run our fair share of marathons, are accomplished downhill skiers and prior to our lives afloat we were triathletes.  While physical activity for me was more about fitness, for Scott it's simply a way of life.  Sitting idle is not something he is used to so it was only a matter of time before he'd find a water sport to fill the athletic void in his life.  He found it in kiteboarding.  The man is obsessed.

The sport is not easy, by any means.  It's condition specific, gear intensive (we have several kites and two boards for various conditions, along with helmets, harnesses and pumps) and usually requires someone in a chase boat to help out....but despite all this effort - effort which looks incredibly tiresome to me (I'll stick with simple SUPing, thankyouverymuch) - Scott assures me that the rush of getting up on that board makes it totally worth it.  Just seeing how happy it makes him to have a few hours out on the water zooming around makes me happy, and when everyone on a relatively small boat is happy, well, life is good.

Yesterday's conditions were about as perfect as they can get; a cross shore wind of about 20-25 knots, flat seas and lots of space to play.  Scott immediately took all his gear to the beach and our buddy Luuck happily followed him in our dinghy to make sure he didn't get himself into trouble.  I must admit, as dangerous as this sport can be (and as nervous as that makes me), it's incredibly beautiful to watch and seeing how happy it makes my honey makes it all worth it, even if we do have a crap load of gear jamming up our aft head shower stall.  We never use it, anyway.  Much nicer to shower outside on the aft deck so storage space it is!

Kiting in Virgin Gorda

The past couple of days have been play time.  Actually, the past couple of weeks have been play time.  We've throughly enjoyed the good, clean livin' here in the British Virgin Islands, leisurely sailing from anchorage to anchorage as if we have all the time in the world.  We might have been stuck waiting for weather, but we've been doing anything but sitting idle.  To be in a place where we have the luxury to sail just a few hours to yet another breathtaking anchorage without having to really care about weather, wave height and all that jazz has it's perks.  It's effortless cruising in these parts, and we've learned that we like effortless cruising.  We will be back to this neck of the woods, there is no question about that.

As most of you know, Scott took up the sport of kiteboarding about a year ago and he's hooked.  While I can appreciate any sport that has the sense of humor and audacity to name a strategic piece of gear the "donkey dick", I'm not going to lie, I was not entirely thrilled with his almost overnight obsession with what is - no question - an 'extreme sport' (read: one that is dangerous to life and limb).  I mean, new boat, new baby...didn't we have enough going on?  Couldn't he enjoy a leisurely paddle around the anchorage on our iSUP? Maybe a peaceful jaunt to a coral reef in our kayak?  And then there was the issue of storing all that gear: the kites (multiple kites for multiple conditions), the boards (yes, plural, multiple conditions), the harness, helmet, control bars, lines, and pumps (and, yes, the 'donkey dick').  My inner neat freak had a kitten looking at all that stuff piled up.  But Scott's got the adrenaline-junky gene wedged somewhere in his DNA right next to the expert-packer gene and he'd made up his mind and somehow tucked all that stuff away in our boat without sacrificing any "prime" real estate.  After he pinky swore he wouldn't die and stowed all the gear I became (semi) cool with it.

Kiteboarding (or kitesurfing) is definitely not an easy one to learn; it's physically demanding, condition specific and requires a pretty decent amount of coordination and gear.  If you can get past these things, it can actually be a nice complement to cruising.  Typically, we prefer to sail from place to place in winds under twenty knots.  Luckily, winds twenty knots and above happen to be primo for kiteboarding so the two fit nicely in that regard.  The fact that - as one kiteboarding friend told us - "every kiter I know has had some serious injury; blown out knees, broken bones, whiplash...some even died" is a mere afterthought after the rush of the ride.  Or so I am told.  (This friend did not help Scott's case, for the record).

On a positive note, we've met loads of kiteboarders along our travels who seem to be completely in tact (Scott has an inner radar for them, I am certain) and I can honestly say that they are a very cool, very helpful bunch of folks.  We met up with some yesterday and not only did they give Scott some pointers, but helped him launch his kite, and manned the chase vehicle while I chilled on the beach snapping photos and watched Isla nibble on driftwood.  To say Scott was stoked would be an understatement.  Good times had by all.

In other news, it's looking like we have a little weather window to cross over to St. Maarten (aka 'the land that wifi forgot'), so - if all goes as planned - we should be leaving this evening for the fifteen to eighteen hour passage.  Unfortunately you might not hear from us for a couple of days and won't be able to track us because our SPOT tracker up and stopped transmitting during our offshore passage and they have been incredibly unhelpful in getting us up and running again.  Don't be alarmed by the radio silence and keep an eye on our Facebook Page for updates as I will most likely post there first.

Hand Stands on Water: Working Out iSUP Style

It's official:  the stand-up paddle board, or "SUP" for the lazy, is pretty much the best toy ever for a cruising boat.  It's easy to use, easy to deploy, and easy to store.  Simple, simple, simple.  Being that our 42 foot hull, while roomy, doesn't have a whole lot of space to store an eleven by three foot rigid board, we went the inflatable route.  Our Airis iSUP has been simply awesome to have on the boat.  We've not only used it as a vehicle for personal exploration, a place to lay back and relax, and an alternate family vessel (yes, we've had our little family of three cruising around on this bad boy) but now, we also use it to work out.

I discovered by happenstance one day that laying on your stomach and paddling the board with both arms on either side in a windmill motion - much how a surfer paddles out to a break - was not only an incredible workout, but felt distinctly cool in that "Oh hey there! Look at me! I (very temporarily) look like a surfer which makes me feel cool because surfers are AWESOME" sort of way.  So the other day when Isla went down for her morning nap, Scott decided to wake up his deltoids and put my new exercise to the test.  I jumped in the water to swim and, twenty minutes later, swam over to him where, next thing I knew, we were giggling like children doing handstands on the water.  And wiping out a lot.

I don't know what possessed him to first do it - but as soon as Scott inverted - the gauntlet had been thrown.  For the next forty-five minutes, most likely to the amusement of everyone else in the anchorage, we practiced inversions coupled with iSUP yoga and had a blast.  For the record, standing on one leg atop an inflatable paddle board is very, very hard.  In fact, it might be impossible. So we kept the yoga to the floor exercises after some comical unsuccessful attempts at standing bow pose. It was fun trying though!

Prepping for an inversion

Almost there! 

Bingo!

A little down dog

The "super cool surfer paddle".  Use both arms at once, or alternate.  Also called "the delt burner"

Sit ups are also great on the SUP

Has the planking craze ended?  Did we miss that boat?

And now, for the blooper reel:

He's not hanging ten, but about to wipe out.  Though he does sort of look "surfer cool" here...

It takes a while to get it right.

Another bonus of doing inversions on the water, this little maneuver is less painful.  

Right before I flopped over with incredible grace (not).