Vacation to this!?!

Ok, I sit here 2 days removed from sitting on Mystic Journey's deck with Dad, Cheryl, Julie, Graham, Amelia, and Alex in warm, sunny 30 degree temperatures. It snowed today. All over Alberta. And it was cold. And windy. As if I needed a reminder of where I'm not.

The Bad
So, you know that grimy feeling you get at the end of a camping weekend? As far as I can figure, that's what living on a sailboat is like, all the time. Plus, I was constantly slapping sunscreen on myself, so that added to the grime. There is no good way to shower, so you never really feel clean. Only one or two parts of you feel clean at a time, and those are short intervals.

The Good
Anyway, spending 7 days in the tropics was more ups than downs. I loved the early mornings and late evenings best. They seemed to be the most still. Impossible to feel rushed or stressed at all. If I practiced meditation, that's what it would be like.

Of course it was great to be with family I haven't seen for so long. Especially the kids, they are so sweet! Amelia snuck a little note in my luggage right before I hopped on the water taxi at the end of the week. I forgot about it until I finally unpacked everything tonight and then I found it and read the message. I felt like I was getting another hug right there and then.

Snorkeling was great in the Piton bay. I had never done it before and we went to a few different spots. I tried to dive a couple of times. And... Fail.

The beach at Jalousie Resort in the Piton bay was nice as well. Graham was nice enough to pick a good spot with lots of "scenery" directly in front of us. Nice to see he was keeping a single guy like me in mind.

I think my favorite night was Happy Hour on Aries (Dave and Cheryl's boat). They served us appies and drinks for a few hours in the dim light of a crank-powered lamp on their deck. Such an easy place to be.

The conclusion
Early on in the week, I started to feel like I was living inside a snowglobe. Alex (independently) had the same observation as me. St. Lucia is such a small island surrounded by infinite water. It was all a bit surreal, what with the perfect palm trees and sunhuts at every distance.

The sea horizon seemed impossibly long, dotted in the mornings with distant boats. There were these strange and frequent gusts of super wind that would take over everything for 30 seconds and then dissappear. Rain came and went just as quickly.

The setting was truly like another world that I had somehow found a secret portal into. I remarked during happy hour that it felt a bit like Truman Show, that if we sailed far enough towards the horizon, we would smash into a wall painted like the blue sky.

Ok this is all a bit dramatic, but that's really how it felt. I can't imagine what it would be like to be on a sailboat with no visible land in any direction. Not sure if that would blow my mind or destroy it.