After all the travel we did last year, 2024 was supposed to be “The Year We Stay Home”. But then, last December, we learned that one of our dearest friends, Steve, wanted to celebrate his 60th birthday with a trip to Costa Rica, so he could get some surf lessons, and they wanted us to come along. After much deliberation (seriously- it might have been 2 whole seconds!), we said we wouldn’t miss it. We just returned from that trip, and it was definitely worthy of a blog post!
Continue reading “Steve’s Surfin’ Safari to Costa Rica”Category: People
Posts that include, or are mainly about, the people in our lives, whether temporary or permanent.
Tahiti (Nui and Iti)
This is the eighth and final in a series of posts, each one about an island we visited on our grand tour of French Polynesia. (The first post was about Mo’orea, the second was about Rangiroa, the third was about Fakarava, the fourth was about Hiva Oa, the fifth was about Nuku Hiva and also included a “status check” on the trip so far, the sixth was about Raiatea and Taha’a, and the seventh was about Maupiti.)
Continue reading “Tahiti (Nui and Iti)”Flowers for Maddie
Fran and I are in the final few days of a trip of a lifetime – we spent two weeks in the Galapagos Islands, followed by nine weeks on eight islands in French Polynesia. The longer the trip has gone on, the more I find myself thinking of Maddie. If you don’t know, Maddie was my daughter, who died in 2017 at the tender age of 22. You can read about that here if you like. In that post, I wrote “One of these days, when the feelings aren’t so raw, I may write more about Maddie…”, and today, finally, is that day.
Continue reading “Flowers for Maddie”French Polynesia Status Check (and Nuku Hiva)
This is the fifth in a series of posts, each one about an island we’re visiting while on our grand tour of French Polynesia. (The first post was about Mo’orea, the second was about Rangiroa, the third was about Fakarava, and the fourth was about Hiva Oa.)
We’re on Nuku Hiva, in the very middle of our nine weeks here in French Polynesia, which seems like a good time to take stock of the trip so far. I have to admit I have mixed feelings about French Polynesia. I’m writing this post at 7:40 p.m. while sitting on the bed in our room in Loic* and Chantal’s* house. I’m sitting on the bed because there is nowhere else to sit in the room, or for that matter, in the part of the house that we’re staying in, and I’m doing it at 7:40 p.m. because there is nothing else to do, and nowhere else to go. Even if there were something to do in the village of Taiohae, it would be a 30 minute walk down a pitch-black road to get there.
Continue reading “French Polynesia Status Check (and Nuku Hiva)”Hiva Oa
This is the fourth in a series of posts, each one about an island we’re visiting while on our grand tour of French Polynesia. (The first post was about Mo’orea, the second was about Rangiroa, and the third was about Fakarava.)
Continue reading “Hiva Oa”Sail Fail
I’ll cut to the chase: Smartini (a.k.a. Fran and Butch/Brian) are not cut out to be sailors, and after 7 days and nights sailing from Panama to the Galapagos Islands, we have opted out of the sail from Galapagos to French Polynesia. We’re still going to FP, but we’ll be flying, not sailing. If you want to know why, read on!
Continue reading “Sail Fail”Smartini Goes Sailing
You know that the boat we lived on for five years (called Smartini – what else?) was NOT a sailboat. It was a trawler, a slow, comfortable, motor boat. Neither of us had any sailing knowledge when we decided to buy a boat, so we went the easy route – buy a motor boat. But the majority of people we met and became friends with during our crusing years were on sailboats, and frankly, our conversations with them about sailing reinforced our choice of a motor vs. sails. (Here’s the gist of it: a sailboat big enough to live on comfortably has every system that a motor boat has – including a motor – and it also has all of the sailing stuff: mast, rigging, and sails, all of which need to be maintained and periodically replaced. So in our minds, the ONLY benefit of a sailboat is that, sometimes, you get to go somewhere without burning fuel. I say “sometimes” because every sailor we’ve met admits that they run the motor – either in conjunction with using the sails, or instead of using the sails – about half the time.)
Continue reading “Smartini Goes Sailing”The Best Wedding EVER
A dear friend of ours (and of many of you, too), Robin, passed away this morning after battling ovarian cancer for about 17 months. She was only 58, and prior to her diagnosis, she was the most physically active, health-conscious, fit human in my group of close friends.
Continue reading “The Best Wedding EVER”Smartini’s First Land Adventure: New York City
Loyal Readers will recall that we recently sold the boat formerly known as Smartini (renamed “Vahevala” just last Saturday) and that we’re now hoping to do a lot of extended-stay land adventures. As to the title of this post, “Smartini” has always referred to Butch and Fran (Smith and Martini = Smartini) since long before there was a boat with that name, and will continue to refer to us. One day, we may buy a house and name it Smartini, but we are Smartini, and Smartini is us. Got it?
Anyway… with us being on the boat for five years, and my son (Fran’s step-son) Bennett being in college for those same five years, we haven’t been able to spend very much time with him for far too long. So we fixed that: we spent a month in New York City, where he recently graduated from college and now lives, so that we could get some quality time with him.
Continue reading “Smartini’s First Land Adventure: New York City”May the Boat Cat
May was with us for more than 5 years. This is a celebration of that time.
Me: “Bennett, what’s this black cat doing in the house?”
Bennett: “Oh, that’s May. You know, from Mom’s house. Since Mom sold the house, she can’t keep May anymore. She’ll only be here until we can find another home for her.”
Me: “Yeah, I know who May is. Well, I guess she can stay here until we find her a good home.”
And so began our five year relationship with the best kitty ever. (You may think you have, or have had, a good kitty, and I won’t argue. But May was the BEST kitty ever.) We never found another home for her, because, to be blunt, she HATED other animals, and everyone we knew who would love to have her already had at least one other pet. After a few months of trying – and a few months of her sitting on my lap for what seemed like hours every day – one day I said to Fran “Well, I don’t suppose it would be horrible to have her on the boat.”
Continue reading “May the Boat Cat”Grenadian River Tubing… OF DEATH!!
This is the “near death” river tubing story… (there may or may not be some embellishment)…
First of all, Grenada is proving to be a WONDERFUL place, for many reasons.
Continue reading “Grenadian River Tubing… OF DEATH!!”The Virgin Islands
Once again, Faithful Readers, I find myself apologizing for such a long wait for a new post. I can only imagine how many of you must wake up each morning and think “Today’s the day – a new post on Smartini Life – I just KNOW it!”. (I imagine that the number is zero.) At any rate, my apologies.
Smartini arrived in Charlotte Amalie, one of the largest settlements on the island of St. Thomas, in the US Virgin Islands, on the afternoon of March 28, just two days ahead of our first guests, Steve and Challen. Friends of ours, Max (Maxine) and Whitey, who we met in Key West after Hurricane Irma, and who run the charter sailboat Nutmeg, were anchored there, so we joined them, anchoring on the West side of Water Island. We promptly put Killer in the water, picked them up from Nutmeg, and went ashore to Tickles, the bar/restaurant at Crown Bay Marina, and proceeded to celebrate our arrival in the Virgin Islands, and our reunion, as it had been over a year since we had last seen them.
Continue reading “The Virgin Islands”2018 – The Year in Review
After a creative explosion in October and November (7 blog posts in about two weeks), I fizzled out. But I’m going to get 2019 off to a good start, with a recap of, and some reflections on, the Big Adventure so far. Also, one picture of each of our guests this year!
As you probably know, we left the US early in the morning on March 1, 2018 (not as early in the morning as we had planned) bound for the Bahamas, and made it all the way to Freeport before the sun set. We didn’t really want to be in Freeport (not much there that we wanted to see or do), but we ended up staying there for five nights, waiting for decent weather for the next leg of our journey.
How a 4 Cent O-ring Can Change Your Life
This is the story of a plain ol’ rubbber O-ring, about 2 1/2″ in diameter, that probably cost about 4 cents to make, and how it just changed the lives (at least in the short term) of six people and three boats. If I told you the WHOLE story, it would read like “War and Peace”, so I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version.
Visit Report: Paul and Denise
Faithful readers of Smartini Life know that the crew of Smartini went to Italy for three weeks in May/June. What they probably don’t know is that two wonderful people stayed onboard Smartini for that time, and more important, took care of May the Cat. They are Paul and Denise Magnus. We met them almost two years ago when we took Smartini to a marina in Titusville to have some work finished. They lived on their boat, Orion, in that marina, and we became friends. Sadly, Orion was destroyed by Hurricane Irma in that same marina, but thankfully, Paul and Denise were not onboard.
When we were making plans for Italy, we knew it would mean leaving Smartini and May somewhere, in someone’s hands. We posted on one of the online boating groups that we were looking for a cat sitter and a boat sitter. Denise saw the post and almost immediately volunteered her and Paul – wow! They would fly all the way to George Town in the Exumas and live on Smartini, and take care of May, and Fran’s new Tower Garden – and asked nothing in return.