Christmas Presents

It’s amazing the kind of gifts that excite you when you live on a boat. Before we bought a boat and started cruising, I received the normal Christmas gifts…jewelry, perfume, lingerie and an array of things for the house. A few Christmases ago…before we started our incredible adventure; I received binoculars and an inflatable life jacket. My friends were not impressed! The binoculars have been used everyday…luckily I haven’t needed the life jacket. This Christmas we both received items that we will make cruising a little safer and easier and happy hour a little happier.

One thing I haven’t liked about living aboard was the lack of ice. We have a small freezer and there has never been room for more than one ice tray…well there’s room for more than one tray, but we do need to have room for food too. You can’t live on margaritas alone!  Santa (Stan) brought me a portable icemaker…I’m so excited. Life will be better this summer…I’m from the south and I love LOTS of ice in my drinks. Ice tea isn’t ice tea with out a lot of ice!

Stan’s big gift is a new radar with multi-function-display (chartplotter, depthsounder, etc.), The Pearl came with an old radar that we used a few time…mostly just to see if it would work if we needed it, and it did fine until this fall. About the time we decided we wanted to go to Maine next summer the radar quit working…I guess it didn’t want to be responsible for our safety on that trip! Stan’s new toy is on order and he will install it when we return to the boat…I’ll do a post on that when it we get back to Charleston.

The beautiful new addition to our boat.

Wonderful ice in just minutes...I love it!

Another gift we received for the boat is an antique anchor lamp. Although it's in prefect working condition...I think it'll stay in the salon as a decoration. What a great conversation piece.