Daily Boat Life (in Charleston, SC)

Boat baby in a tub - 10 months old

The tub does double-duty as our coat-storage tub when it’s not full of baby and bubbles

Zephyr is currently obsessed with birds. Pelicans are his favorite, but egrets are a close second, and he’ll settle for a seagull if neither of the above are around. So we spend a good portion of every day pointing out birds and trying to get him to learn the sign for “bird” (currently he only knows “milk” which means he signs “milk” any time he wants anything… which is especially fun when you’re the daddy — aka the ‘milk broker’ — and can only broker the next milk, not actually provide it!).

Boys in their shades

Boat baby munching on an apple in the quarterberth

Little man loves tiny apple peel bites

As we approach Week 8 of life in Charleston Harbor Marina, we’re definitely finding our rhythm… babysitting offers have started pouring in, the hotel staff know my name too (not just Z’s), and we’ve figured out which drivers of the morning “boater” shuttle are willing to make a few extra stops (post office, West Marine, Trader Joes, etc) and which are sticklers for the grocery store only run.

Charleston Harbor Marina - trolley to do errands

We took this beauty to the post office & turned a few heads…

We rode the water taxi into town last weekend… Z is definitely a boater at heart. If you ask “where’s the ship” he’ll delightedly point out any passing freighters, no additional prompting required. So the water taxi was a hit, although the weird kid was more excited by the seagulls and ships than the leaping, frolicking dolphins so we might need to work on the sign for “dolphin” too 🙂

Water taxi into Charleston

On the boat front, another new radome was shipped to us here, it didn’t fix the problem (!!!), so we shipped the remaining radar pieces off to radar-repair-purgatory (aka: New Hampshire). We don’t know exactly when we might get it back (and be able to continue a little further south), but we do know that it won’t be this week, and probably won’t be next week either.

Boat baby in the radar box

At least the radome box makes a good toy

Playing with a hammer in the cockpit - who needs toys?

Who needs toys?? Just give the kid a couple of hammers (and stand back)!

The lack of a plan drives me a little nuts, but at least when I know we can’t leave it takes the constant-questioning away — and means we can just settle into making the most of our time here… Put the cruising guides and charts away for a bit, and quit obsessing over Florida-inlet options and the Gulf Stream patterns and where we might spend Zephyr’s birthday. Zephyr will turn one no matter where we are. And we’re renting a car and going on a roadtrip this weekend. So that’s enough for today.

Digital nomad - office by the pool for the day

“The office”

The Brio Trio with their super cool shades

In the meantime, we’ve got a good little routine going… we wake up and watch for birds out the vberth hatch, we have breakfast together, I work in the hotel while the boys hang out on the boat, we meet for lunch (and milk brokerage), Z goes to bed around 6pm (despite us being 4′ away — god bless battery-powered white noise machines!) so we get a few hours of “us” time (oh hello, husband, I remember you!) and we start every morning with a chorus of dadadada-mamama-dada-mama-da-ahhhhh’s sometime between 5:30 and 6am…

Boat baby snuggled up in the vberth

…Other than the mornings that Z decides 4:30 is wakeup time (seagulls? boat wakes?) and then I hide under the covers and try to figure out what time it is while Jon waits for direction on whether he can “let Zephyr out” (of his zip-up lee-cloth bed) or not 😉 It’s like having an unruly puppy who demands milk a lot.

Boat baby playing in the cockpit

Can't miss the hot chocolate bar at the Beach Club

Have I mentioned the afternoon hot chocolate bar??

And in the few moments of quiet between all this, Jon works on Brio and continues to make little life improvements for us all (Those cockpit speakers? They’re installed! And amazing!! Although now we have to remember to double-check if they’re on before we crank the morning Shakira booty shakin’ tunes 😉 Not sure our neighbors appreciate our cockpit speakers as much as I do!!!) and I continue to sneak peeks at the cruising guides and dream of where the next months might find us…

Charleston Harbor Marina - cute boys

– LMK

Boat baby reading his boat book


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