I am sitting on a comfortable divan overlooking Marigot on St. Martin while my boat is somewhere in the British Virgin Islands. Has the boat been stolen? … No. Have I sold the boat? … No, far from it. I have decided to take 4 months away from her to make some much needed money. It’s not that I’m going bankrupt, but I want to raise enough money to enable me to pay back a good portion of what I owe Gideon, the previous owner. I came to realize that if I only relied on the charter income that it would take me a few years to pay him back. The result is that I am now going to return to Royal Caribbean to do 3-months of fill-in work for them as Head Broadcast Technician. My boat will still be chartering, but now the boat is being captained by Trond Vika Furu,
with Thomas Framnes as his very capable deck-hand. It was hard to go ashore from the boat and leave her in the hands of others, but it had to be done.
The impact has been mad much easier by Ian Gurr , whose fantastic hospitality I’ve been enjoying these past few days. The pictures below show you why.
I have the guesthouse to myself and even have a pick-up truck at my disposal. I now spend the days relaxing on my divan, writing, exploring the surroundings and sampling the island’s nightlife. This is just the kind of vacation I needed. I’ll stay here till February 21st, when I fly to Galveston in Texas to join the Voyager of the Seas, where I’ll work for 6 – 7 weeks, before I go to another ship and work there till I return to my boat on June 1s. The tentative plan now is to use the month of June to sail the boat down to Venezuela to dodge the hurricanes. While Hurricanes make life miserable in the Caribbean, I figured I’d leave the boat
there and return to Norway to spend the summer working there. We’ll see what happens, plans always change, but for now it seems like a good one.
I also have to include a picture from where I stayed my first night when I disembarked. I couldn’t get a hold of Ian, but through
Couchsurfing I got in touch with a friendly Dane that let me surf his couch. Let’s just say that I really liked the location of his beach house.
