Mini Mark meets his new home

It was a little crazy getting back to the boat after seven months away. I'm not really sure how I felt about the whole thing...actually that's a lie. When I got on board my stomach just tightened up at all the work I'll have to do to get the boat ready to go again and this time I have a whole lot of baby stuff to store.

When we arrived in the morning it was a little overcast but we were able to haul the bags up on a halyard (the boat is currently on the hard) and then we hauled up the baby. Yep, we strapped him into his carseat as tight as possible, attached a line with a secure shackle to his seat and up he went. We got a talking too later in the day from one of the marina people who didn't think we should have done that. Should we have carried him up the ladder? I don't think so. Of course as a mother it made me nervous but hell I haul my 200+ lb husband up our 66ft mast on this same line so I felt confident it was the safest way.

The morning went alright. Mark did some work under the boat while I worked to get the things we needed to spend a few weeks traveling around Australia before we really return to the boat and get her back in the water.

During lunch the sun had appeared and when we returned it became apparent very quickly that it was too hot on the boat for the baby so I threw stuff in bags as quickly as I could while Mark watched MM in the car. Then I lowered the bags and MM and I went back to the hotel to get everything reorganized and sorted while Mark finished greasing the prop. Mark is starting to realize that you can't really get as much done when there is a baby around and that life really is going to be different!

Later that night we had a great dinner with our friends from Shellette, whom we had met in Fiji and Mark had spent a lot of time with in Vanuatu while I was away. Marni brought a gift for Mini Mark and I think he's awfully cute in his new shades if I do say so myself.