Skillman Scuttlebutt: Welcome to "One Life"

Meet the boat and her crew...A tour of "One Life", the chartered 42' catamaran the Williams so graciously invited us to come aboard and spend several weeks. (or did we invite ourselves?).

This is Captain Williams at the helm. Before we arrived Captain Keith injured his foot by slipping on a deck cleat and slicing it up pretty bad. At times he walked with a limp when his foot was stiff and sore. This gave the appearance of a true pirate peg-leg walk which we found very authentic.

Here is our First Mate Kathy with a real eye patch. This is the result of a sailing injury that happened while (okay, remind me again what story we're telling people...) we were making a passage in heavy seas...really heavy seas (is that the right story Kath?). She and "Captain Peg Leg" made a nice pirate couple.

Here's Pete our Captain-in-Training, most kids at 16 are barely driving dad's old beater car and Pete's got command of a 42' cat that has no brakes. He's actually got a knack for steering the giant beast and docking it like he's parking a car. He's really quite good at it, it's very impressive. We've taken to calling him "Dirk Pitt" as he has done a few epically heroic deeds aboard "One Life" not to mention he's tried a few dangerous and amusing stunts which we had hoped his mother would not hear about. Word to the wise, Kathy WILL find out.

The Galley where all Kathy's magic happens. Somehow she made this very slow cooking oven turn out the best desserts too; banana walnut cakes, pineapple upside-down cakes, chocolate no-bakes, she even made us some awesome chocolate s'mores on the BBQ!

The settee...where we rarely eat meals, that happens in the salon (that's the back deck) where there is a nice table. Pete here, is taking a snooze, probably after getting whipped (AGAIN) by Stacy in a crazy game of speed. The settee sees more games than an average casino, favorite games include: Speed Scrabble, Hearts, Rummikub, Crazy Eights, enough Solitaire games to make you ill, and, if the crew has enough energy, a game of Curses might happen. The settee is also home to Movie Night, Snack Fest, and can be conveniently used as a charting table if no one is breaking the rule about not sleeping at the settee.

"One Life" seems to be in the middle of her mid-life crisis years as she likes to take on water during passages taken during high seas. Kathy has used her handy-dandy roll of duct tape to stop the leaks. It works pretty well and we look very posh all "blinged up in duct tape" when we're in port anchored next to the yachts...very posh indeed.

Here's Mark enjoying a nice day out on the salon. This is where we eat most of our dinners complete with the warm glow of votive candles if it's not too windy. The helm is located here on the Starboard side.

This is the companionway on the port side of the boat which I have taken to call the "french side" (explanation later). The view is into the aft and smaller cabin that will be my new home for several weeks once Mark goes home (he's here for the first week).

My very hard bed which has driven me to have my back cracked each morning by Kathy, who's an expert! I prefer to do all lounging about on the bow's trampoline or in my borrowed hammock that swings ever so precariously off the dingy's davit. Anything but that bed! The only drawback to the hammock is that getting into it without flipping back out and into the ocean requires some serious skill but I'm getting pretty good at it.

Here is all my worldly belongings, a fine spectrum of stuff that's important for every crew member to have: Three bathing suits, chapstick, a can of spray SPF which only gets used on the nose, one bottle of water, aspirin, a baseball cap proudly sporting an American flag (which is not a smart thing to wear in Guadeloupe when there is a riot on the island-little late on that memo!), a couple decks of cards, hand sanitizer for those french bathrooms, assorted tank tops, books that will never get read (too many beaches to explore, hikes to take, and wrecks to dive), and a pair of tennis shoes for jogging (I quit after Mark left...shhhh...). Oh yeah, and copious amounts of Body Shop's Coconut Body Butter (yes, that's a product endorsement)

Starboard vs. Port, Dutch vs. French does it all really matter?
Why yes it does. After spending several nights DOCKED in St. Maarten (that's the dutch side spelling) I think we spent too much time close to shore where there was a live band playing all night at the dock's bar. All night we were serenaded by the bellowing of off-pitch songs (I think this was a ruse to sell a lot of drinks as you'd have to be pretty sauced up to enjoy the band). Because we were sober, we suffered through a series of otherwise lovely nights. The last night we were docked, the singer crooned a new song we hadn't heard before, singing ever so loudly and off key "On the Dutch Side! On the Dutch Side!". The song was incredibly lame (call me Simon I don't care) and when he finished he proudly exclaimed, "That was an original song I wrote myself!". Really? You don't say? I might have mistakenly thought it was written by someone who was living far away who also happened to live by a french and dutch side cause that probably happens often!
Unfortunately for the rest of the crew, I took to singing "On the Dutch Side" repeatedly over the next couple of days (okay maybe weeks) whenever something lame would happen, thus the renaming of the sides of the boat. "Dutch Side" for the boring side (sorry Pete, it had nothing to do with you) and the "French Side" for the fun exotic side of the boat...that would be my side!

My side of the boat! Our old Captain Bryan lived here too before he jumped ship and later Chris and Mal (Keith and Kathy's Son and wife) moved over to "France" too. Let it be known that while the french side is fun it is also smellier than the dutch side which is not unlike the french bathrooms we encountered on shore. (please note that the smell was not necessarily caused by the citizens of the french side (maybe just one) but the "head" which was not working so well.

This would be our dingy, our less than dependable transport. I still have hand craps from twisting the throttle all the way in to shore or docking.

As you can see, the dingy had it's own set of issues that were repaired using "The Kathy Method" (more duct tape). Even with this lovely modification you had a 50/50 chance of it starting, which, is why we kept a couple of oars stowed permanently in the dingy.