Key West was the starting point of this great adventure of ours. We packed up the S-10 Blazer and the utility trailer with everything we had left after the garage sale and left Montana in search of sailing lessons and the hunt for the perfect sailboat. As we headed out to sea from Key West for our one week of live-a-board sailing lessons, John became deathly seasick and announced that “this was not for him and we must turn around and go back”. The captain calmly told John to come and take the helm (steering wheel) and stare straight out to sea. Worked like a charm, crisis averted. In years to come, I was the one who got seasick at the start of every passage.
After our week of lessons and plenty of wonderful information from our Captain, we felt ready to start sailboat hunting. We went back up to the St.Petersburg / Miami area and started visiting and checking off our daily list of possible new homes. We negotiated a low weekly rate at a local motel, we ate a very cheap 6 pack of tacos between the two of us, every day for lunch (some of you may remember that Taco Bell special back then) and we drove and looked at boat after boat.
After checking out dozens of boats we ended up buying the third boat that we had seen. A lovely 33 foot Morgan Out Island, 18 years old, that would be roomy, easy sailing and very forgiving. We christened her “Never Monday”, our new motto! In all actuality, we have worked almost every Monday since then! But, a different kind of work. Wonderful, exciting, scary and exhilarating work!
About two months into our new life on Never Monday, we were enjoying living at the dock of Oceanside Marina, diving for lobster and working in Key West to pay for outfitting the boat. We sold the Chevy Blazer and bought a scooter for me to travel to work. Now we were truly, boat people and I was a scooter commuter. Great fun! We partied at Jimmy Buffet’s bar, Margaritaville, eating many of the obligatory Cheeseburgers in Paradise. We toured Mel Fishers treasure museum featuring the wreck of the Nuestra Senora de Atocha. We got way too happy at Key Wests Fantasy Fest. We kept a small freezer on the dock by our sailboat mooring that was always well stocked with lobsters. Diving for them was our favorite pastime, The news arrived of an approaching hurricane. Andrew turned out to be very deadly and destructive and we were so new to the sailing game that we chose to stay on the boat and “protect her” during the storm. As other boat owners secured their boats and rushed by on their way out of the Marina, they waved and said “nice knowing you”. It should have been a clue. But all turned out OK, Key West was thankfully spared the brunt of the storm and Never Monday and her two new children were fine.
One day we applied for a job that was advertised in a sailing magazine for work in the British Virgin Islands as underwater videographers and Divemasters. We got the job and our new boss said we needed to be at the Bitter End Yacht Club in three months, by Christmas and we needed to be Divemasters. It was a two month sail, that left us one month…So a quick run over to the PADI dive shop, luckily just around the corner, to sign up for the 4 week Divemaster class. We finished outfitting the boat in our spare time, wrapped up both our jobs and we were on our way! Our first big sail in NeverMonday! A very good friend, Doris, from Montana flew over to Key West to join us on the sail and we drank Pina Coladas and sang Jimmy Buffet songs all the way to Nassau, where she caught her plane back to the States.
The swimming pigs of Exuma, Bahamas
A smooth starlit sail to the Bahamas with a little scuba diving on arrival, down to the Dominican Republic, across to Puerto Rico and on to Virgin Gorda in the BVI, arriving on Christmas Eve!
