Gemma was nice enough to snap some pictures of Amara as they were leaving the marina and sent them to me. Imagine my surprise to get these pictures in my inbox! I was so excited to see these and really want to thank her for taking the time to send them to me.
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| There she goes! |
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| I really love this shot of Martin steering Amara. It feels like they left Canet ages ago. |
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I bet by now a lot of you are wondering, "What do they do all day?" I know I did when we were first looking at buying a boat. What was I going to do with all this time? Boy did I have a lot to learn.
On Amara, their daily schedule begins at around
6:00 am when Patrice comes up to the flybridge to relieve Garry from the first watch
of the day. Garry then goes to bed for a
few hours (unless a sail change is needed—which means "all hands on deck"). At 10:00 am, Martin’s watch starts and ends at 2:00 pm when Garry comes up for his second watch of the day. Each of them take 4 hour shifts, and in between their shifts, they find time to sleep and eat.
Patrice probably has the best sleeping
schedule among the three sailors; having most of the night and afternoon off
to sleep. However, remember that Patrice is on call all the time. So, if there is even the slightest bit of a
problem, he may only get a few hours of sleep a night. It’s all a trade off, and I would venture to
guess that none of them have gotten all that much sleep during this journey.
As far as cooking, they all take a turn
at cooking dinner—trading off every third night.
Garry tells me that Martin can actually
cook, but pretends to not like it (I could have told him that). Patrice is an “excellent cook”, but doesn’t
really enjoy doing it either. Garry says that
he “likes to cook" but doesn't have enough spices and seasonings, food that he
used to cooking with so it's a little harder to get creative.
During the day, the crew usually fends
for themselves for breakfast and lunch because of their schedules all being
different.
One of the things that I was adamant
about Martin buying while provisioning the boat was to get a bread maker. Bread makers come in really handy on a
boat because it ensures that the crew gets fresh bread when they run out of the
store bought stuff. The other night they
finally ran out of bread, so Garry took it upon himself to break in my new bread maker
and made their first loaf. Martin said
that it turned out great. Garry said
that next time they fire up the generator to "forget the bread, I'm making
chocolate chip cookies!"
Their supply of fresh fruits and
vegetables are all but gone now and they all worry about getting scurvy. (I think they’ll survive, but maybe next time
they’ll remember to bring some Vitamin C with them).
When Garry was leaving to go meet Martin
in Canet, he came over to our house to grab some of the items that needed to go over to Martin. In the process, I gave Garry a hard drive
chalk full of movies to get them across the Atlantic. However, in the process of doing it and being
in an huge hurry, I downloaded the hard drive to another hard drive that I was
setting up for me and accidently deleted all the movies on the hard drive that
I gave to Garry. Fast forward to 3 men on the sea, they are left with the 6 movies that Martin had on his iPad to help them to pass the
time on the water. Martin said that he
has watched Forest Gump about 3 times and Garry has watched it twice. When I talked to Martin last night, he was
just finishing Secretariat for the 3rd time. Poor guys.
When I do get to St. Martin, there will be entertainment because I am bringing lots of movies (on my hard drive) along with lots of gadgets that will keep them busy and entertained for hours.
Now back to my list. My ongoing list of things to do before I leave. Will it ever end? I sure hope so.
