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.