South

Tonight is the night that we depart for warmer waters. Luc Strickland and my cousin Peter have come along to help with the delivery. We leave tonight at 9pm and will go straight 1100 miles to Fort Lauderdale. It should take us 3 and a half days which would put us in Lauderdale on friday morning. Heres a last look at fairhaven. We went in to Boston when Luc first arrived for an incredible house party with Mike' s friends. They had a live band on the deck in the middle of south boston that could be heard from 4 blocks away.

Sea Bass

Heres some giant striped bass that we caught drifting just outside of boston. The bait was live eels.

Live every week like it's shark week

The summer season is coming to a close and it is beginning to get a bit crispy up here in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. It usually 60s or 70s, but with a bit of wind, the dewy mornings are chilly. Tomorrow, we will have our last trip of the season to nantucket. After that, we will prepare to head south to Fort Lauderdale to the big boat show. There will be 200 yachts in the show, with the biggest topping out at around 200ft with helicopter landing pads. With big boats come big crews, and from what i have heard, the boat show sponsered parties are always a good time. After that, however, our future is uncertain. The boat is for sale, so it could sell in Fort lauderdale, which would mean one of two things. Either the new owner has another boat with a full crew and will transfer his crew over to the kaleen, or he does not have a crew and will chose to keep the crew aboard as we already work together well and know the boat. If the former is the case, then I get a vacation and a chance to look for a new job on another boat. If the boat doesn't sell, we will probably go to the bahamas or the carribbean and do chartered trips down there. Either way, I am not worried. The worst case scenario is that I will move out to steamboat with Luc and Brett and spend a season skiing. So life certainly doesn't suck. In fairhaven, it has been more of the same. keeping the boat proper during the day, and then geocaching, sea snake snatching(eel hunting, no luck yet, but when we get one, we are gonna catch one hell of a striper), throwing a frisbee and some night time excursions to boston and newport. Yesterday I ordered a camera. Its the upgraded version of the one waterproof one that I had before, so hopefully I will be able to post some snorkling/scuba pics in a month or so. As for now, here is a geocaching picture of Ashley and I. She and chef Alex left yesterday to go to farmAid and then to Oklahoma before going down to Ft. Lauderdale.

Photos of my new house

Here are some fotes of the M/Y Kaleen. This past weekend, the owners came on board and we cruised over to Nantucket. They are a nice family with four kids in their late twenties/early thirties. As a deckhand, it was my job to help with the luggage and wash all of the salt off of the boat. Since the owners don't want us running around washing the boat while they are on it, we just have a few odd jobs to do, like filling the freshwater tanks and uncovering the cushions in the morning. Other than that, we had most of the weekend to ourselves. We walked around the island, found some treasure and went out to the bars at night. Since the owners have a couple of houses on Nantucket, theydon't sleep on the boat. They just come aboard for Alex's meals, all of which were 6 or 7 courses of five star restaurant quality food. It is really impressive to watch him work in the kitchen.Picture of the tender


At night, we would go out into the downtown bar scene, which is almost completely covered in pastels and seersucker. It reminded us of a little Disneyland. One day, Alex and I spent a couple of hours walking around the town in search of a seersucker cape. No luck, but I think we will make one for a return trip and it will be a big hit. The best outfit was a pair of slacks or chinos(definitely too expensive to be called pants) that had a salmon pink right leg and a canary yellow left leg and was covered in embroidered whales. This is where Matt Bledsoe will go when he dies.
On Sunday, there was a party hosted by the dock master to thank his crew and all of the boats who were around all summer. Raw oysters, tons of appetizers and a few kegs of beer ( I highlyrecommend Whale Tail, I think its local NE beer). This went on until dark, which was about the time that a drunk guy fell backwards off of the 10ft. dock into the water. We rescued him swiftly. After, Mike and I went out to a music venue only to find that they was no live music. there was, however, a couple of cute girls from Poland and Russia. I will send out wedding invitations when I clear the dates with my parents. The cruise back tofairhaven was a bit choppy but otherwise uneventful. We are waiting to hear if we are going back this weekend. If not, I might try to make it down to NYC or maybe to the much closer Newport for a night out.