S/V L'ORIENT

Bequia - The Whaleboner Restaurant (for obvious reasons) During our brief forays into the real world (i.e. away from our yacht), Kirstin and I encounter a lot of people in the US who are incredulous that we spend our whole lives in the Caribbean. We often hear "isn't every island the same?"or "I've been to the Caribbean; I went to Sandals in St. Thomas one time." We try to not look down on these luminaries of cartography...these modern day Magellans. We hear folks describe their wonderful trip to the mega-resort in Nassau, Bahamas as a trip to the Caribbean - until we point out that the Bahamas are actually in the north Atlantic, not the Caribbean. We will usually try something subtle like "Normally one needs to be in a bowling alley to hear travel tips as informed as yours". Our learning over the past 5+ years of cruising is that there is a scientific theory at work here.......we call it the "Second Island Postulate". It goes like...

View from the stern today - Le Marin, Martinique Kirstin and I skew towards the younger end of cruisers, probably 10 years younger on average. If you throw in the fact that we are "all-in" in cruiser parlance (meaning we do this virtually full time) and we have a very nice boat.........actually a yacht by length.........and it raises some questions with the neighbors. "So tell me how you swing this?" "Are you guys trust fund people?" "Did you invent Bitcoin or something?" These questions usually intrude while we're at a cruiser bar on shore - we're pretty careful about who we invite aboard L'ORIENT. Anyway, our boat card (pictured below) just adds mystery to the situation, as we're the only cruisers we've seen who don't include a last name or any identifying information at all. Being HUGE fans of comedy, this situation is ready made for some Tom and Kirstin fun. When we get one of these prying, nosy ques...

Delivery Van Cargo Selfie A boat is an organism existing in a harsh environment. The sun, sea, and salt air combine to create an unforgiving, corrosive stew that eventually destroys all. Kirstin and I view ourselves as antibodies that attempt to keep our home livable (OK, and luxurious) against these forces. Thus, we are constantly fixing fiberglass, aluminum, electronics, sails, upholstery, machinery, plumbing, etc. Waiting until something breaks doesn't always work, as we frequently sail in places that barely have clean water, let alone the shops and stores that seem to be on every street corner in the USA's exurbs. So, our clothes washer (yes, we have one on L'ORIENT !!!) is 14 years old......original to the boat. As we're considering expanding our sailing area to places like Colombia and Panama in coming years, having it break in a remote place would be annoying and not consistent with L'ORIENT's dignity. Time for replacement, and what better place tha...