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.

Today is thursday and I have been on the boat for 4 days. Overall, I really like my situation here. I am the deckhand in a 6 person crew. The captain, Mike, is a really nice canadian guy in his mid- thirties. Then there is the first mate, also named mike, who I primarily work with in keeping the exterior of the boat clean and working. There are 2 stewardesses, Eda from Hungary and Ashley from Oklahoma, whose job it is to keep the inside of the boat clean and working. Lastly, Alex is the chef. He cooks several courses for every meal. So far I have learned that there are both good and bad parts in living on a yacht. Here they are:
Great Things:

I get hot meals for free every day, made from quality ingredients by a professional chef. If he does not cook for whatever reason, we go out to a nice restaurant with the boat credit card.
Rent is free.
I get to be outside all day every day. So far is has been warm and sunny. This may not always be the case.
the rest of the crew is pretty fun. I think that I can get along with anybody, but it would really suck to get stuck on a boat with crappy people.
We get to travel to where the weather is nice. We will be crusing around Nantucket this weekend and eventually head down to the huge boat show in Fort Lauderdale in October. Unless the boat gets sold.
Free Laundry
Free "Kaleen" clothes- T shirts, a fleece, a raincoat, some dryfit polos, some khaki pants
Mike and I have a shower attached to our room. The shower has an escape hatch. This means I can escape whenever I want.
I don't have to wear shoes ever



Not so great things:
I have a roommate, and we live in a room the size of a porta-potty. Its actually the size of a handicapped porta-potty, but that is still pretty small. My bed is the size of a casket.
Some asshat stole my flipflops off of the dock tuesday night. I left them in the shoe backet on the dock and someone snatched them. It is kind of a funny thing to steal from a $15 million boat.
The yachting community expects good hygiene. This is different from the collegiate and whitewater communities.
We usually start between eight and nine in the morning. This is much earlier than noon.

The boat itself is 130' long and weighs 290 tons. The boat holds 9700 gallons of diesel fuel and 1800 gallons of water. At a cruising speed of around 20 knots, it gets about 1/4 mpg. This means that our carbon footprint is roughly the size of New Hampshire.
I will put some pictures up on the blog once I get paid and can get a new camera.

Tomorrow, the guests will come aboard and we will cruise to Nantucket for a long weekend. I hope everyone is well.

I got a job! 130' Westport motor yacht called Kaleen. Ill be working with 6 other people, one of whom is a good friend from the boat safety/firefighting course that we took in June. I will begin work in Fairhaven on Monday morning. We will spend a month in Nantucket/Martha's Vineyard/Cape Cod area, then head south for a month in Ft. Lauderdale/Miami area and then go to the Caribbean for the winter. It sounds like a really cool crew and a fun itinerary.

In other news, David Wright is in town. Later today, a coupe of girls from Finland are coming into to couchsurf. Other than that, I am preparing to move my life into the small storage area that I will have once aboard.

Anyone wanna help us find some treasure? I made it close until my computer crashed and the puzzle reset. See what you can do

http://four.flash-gear.com/npuz/puz.php?c=v&id=2605971&k=34446581

Today is Tuesday, August 19th. I worked this morning doing provisions for Cocktails, a hundred foot motor yacht. It has been the best boat to work on thus far. I really like the crew and I have been getting fed as well as paid $20-$25/hour. This morning, my job was to goo with the chef to the grocery store to buy food and cleaning supplies for the upcoming week long charter. We spent $1800 in filling 5 shopping carts with a lot of delicious looking food.

This past weekend, my cousin Chris, Jenna and John Warner came into Newport. Chris came from Vermont Law school, Jenna from Manhattan and John from Maine. We went to the beach for some volleyball. On Sunday, we went to Frisbee, swam in the sea at the cliff walk and hung out on the porch and had a porch party. John is going to hang out for at least a week. This weekend, David Wright is going to be around as well, along with 2 Finnish girls from couchsurfing. I think that there are pictures from this weekend on Tony's camera. I will post them up when I get them. Tonight, I'm going to work at the IYAC. Hope all is well everywhere else.