Birthdays on a boat

It has been an eventful two weeks since my last post.  Enough time to work up a new portfolio of pictures and the stories that fallow.  Some of them i'm sure you have seen and heard already but I will share them none the less for those of you who are not as caught up on my day to day.
The first event to mention would be Wayne's birthday on the 18th.  It was his 25th I believe.  Celebrations can at times be a bit subdued when confined to a boat, but we managed to entertain ourselves quite well with a few beers, a tight rope, and a deck of cards.

I won the house of cards competition.

We ended the night with a pizza and a game oh hide and go seek.  Now that I think about it that night resembled my 8th birthday quite closely.
The fallowing night we were surprised by a spontaneous eruption of fireworks just south of our anchorage.  I was told the island hosts random firework shows about once a month during the busy season.  It was an impressive spectacle for such an occasion as the 19th of January.

  
Shortly after Waynes's birthday we welomed a new guest to the boat.  The owner's daughter took a week away from the frigid New York weather to visit her dad and the Caribbean sun.  With a guest on board my work load doubles.  I do however enjoy the oppertunity to make a few deserts I haven't tried before and kick up my cooking to a three course gourmet status.
Last Sunday Wayne and I celebrated both our guest's exit and our renewed freedom with a dive.  It took us a while to decide on a location but after some deliberation we settled on a wreck we had heard about from some locals on the island.  It was said to be a 200ft motorboat by the name of Nonstop.  It sank less than a mile from Gustavia Harbor during hurricane Hugo in 1989.  The exact whereabouts of this sunken vessel was unknown to us but we decided we would splash near a white mooring ball set for dive boats and search from there.  We swam some distance exploring the colorful coral and synchronized schools of fish in the area.   Caught up in wonder at the brilliant underwater spectacle before me, I had completely lost sight of our initial goal of finding the wreck.  I found myself exploring with no objective but to see what was just out of sight.  As were the circumstances, I can not take credit for finding Nonstop, more like she found us.   Intently fallowing a Manta Rey gracefully gliding along the sea bed, I nearly ran into the massive inverted hull of the ship.      

We even crossed paths with a medium sized reef shark resting under a bit of the wreckage!











In all the wreck was an impressive sight, and a reminder of how formidable the ocean can be at time.  The experience was a major highlight of my extended visit to this tropical paradise.

It is now the 26th of January, my birthday!  The last two months have seamed to fly by. As far as birthday plans go, I don't have many.  This last dive was a bit of a conjoined celebration dive for mine and Wayne's birthday.  We have hopes to go on a shark dive with a group on our next visit to St Marten.
As of 10:30am Caribbean time, 6:30am Pacific time,  I have received an overwhelming amount of "happy birthday" wishes.  Thank you all so much for making this day great!
Hope you all enjoyed this one!

Cheers

KB


I'm trying to get the picture of the manta Rey up but it is being quite difficult.  Check back in  a day or two and it should be up.    

I apologize for the wait on this post.  Over the last few weeks the internet connection has proven to be quite unreliable to say the least.  To the point that I have been forced unwillingly into what I consider internet rehab.  With my phone comfortably resting on the sea bed, for reasons I will not discuss, and no internet  signal to be found,  the social withdrawals from the world have been great.   What I am trying to say is the blog is not the only one suffering as a result.
In all honesty, the internet man could not have picked a better week to take off.  The holidays were quite busy for me with guests coming and going, and taking part in the holiday festivities.  St Barts was a swarming hub of super yachts and curse lines.  Some of the most beautiful and extravagant boats make there way from all over the world to this small island for Christmas.

The boat I was most excited to see was the leader of the fleet by far.  A boat I had read about and fallowed for years,  The Maltese Falcon.   At 281ft this $130 million dollar marvel holds the title as the largest sailboat in the world.

I have a link to the boat's web page and bio in the links section of the blog.  It is defiantly worth looking at.

    With the departure of our guest came a little free time for me and a chance to get off the boat. Sunday was our day off and the wrest of the crew were just as anxious to get off the boat as I was.  We discussed our mutual feelings and set our sights on one of the rock islands protruding  from the ocean surface about half a mile from the boat.  We filled a nap sack with all the essential for a day on a rock, beer, snorkel, and camera.

 

After scaling the rock walls to get to the top the only thing left to do was explore the bottom portion of the island.

During our exploration of the submerged half of the island we happened a cross a small reef shark!  Or should I say it happened upon us.  Being my first time swimming with a shark I was too excited to even think about taking a picture until it swam away.

Well I think that about catches you up with the latest and greatest that's happening in my life.  The remainder of this month should be quite enjoyable. Two birthdays on the boat including my own!  And we're not expecting another guest till the beginning of February.
Hope you all enjoyed the pictures!
A belated happy holidays to everyone back home!

KB