We have probably mentioned the local pirate ship on our blog before:  The Black Raven is a prominent feature of the St. Augustine harbor.  It is a “replica” pirate ship that does live theatrical pirate shows on board the ship.  It was one of the first things we saw the first time we came to St. Augustine and one of the things we first loved about this city.  Ever since we first saw this charming pirate ship, we have fantasized about working on it.  Over the last few months, we’ve been getting to know a few of the pirate crew, and asking about working on the ship.  Up until now, they haven’t had any openings, so we’ve been waiting patiently for the busier springtime season to arrive when they would need more people.

Our day has come!  Cap’t K has been asked to join the pirate team as a driver/captain for the secondary ship, called the Queen Anne’s Revenge.  He will be responsible for driving the dread pirate Blackbeard over to a battle with the main Black Raven ship, and apparently cannons will be fired back and forth in a mock battle between the two boats until the Queen Anne’s Revenge loses and has to surrender the treasure chest to the Black Raven and all the children aboard.  Quite the job description!

I am going for a full pirate position, and have my big audition for the role TOMORROW.  For the audition, I have to sing a sea shanty, tell a pirate joke, and generally convince them that I am a good addition to the pirate crew.  Of course, I will be wearing my costume I have been putting together for the last few months.  If anyone knows any good pirate jokes, please let me know.  (Dad, I know you must have a few!)

I’m a bit nervous about the audition, so wish me luck!  (If I “break a leg”, I can get a peg leg and be really aunthentic….aarrrrr aaaarrrrr!)

This may be our big break into the world of pirates, so watch out!

This past week a good friend of mine from Massachusetts came down to St. Augustine to visit us.  She was one of the wonderful people who hosted us in her home while we were homeless in New England this past summer, and it was fun to invite her into our tiny home and show her a glimpse of our lives here.  She was a great sport about sharing space in such a small dwelling, and dealt with the inconveniences of not having modern plumbing, limited water, no privacy, etc with a great attitude.  I had been a bit stressed beforehand wondering how we would all get along on the boat for a whole week, but it ended up being totally fine.  One night we even had 4 people on the boat, as another good friend of ours was passing through the area and stopped in for a quick overnight visit.  It was the Way Happy Slumber party, and a good time was had by all!

While my friend was here, I got to “play tourist” with her and check out some of the St. Augustine tourist activities that I haven’t done yet.  One of the highlights was the St. Augustine Alligator Farm.  This is a very small zoo that mainly features members of the crocodile family, along with some very cool birds, monkeys, and other creatures.  I never knew alligators were so interesting!  It is really something to see not just a few alligators up close and personal, but to see literally hundreds of them all around you!  And there weren’t just American alligators, there were also exotic crocodiles like this one, my favorite, who is from India.

One day we went to an amazing “circus sideshow” act that was held at the Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum.  It featured 3 “freaks the likes of which we’ve never seen before”, who could do things such as swallow swords, lie on  bed of nails, eat crushed glass, and shove power drills up his nose.  I have seen a lot of crazy things before,  and done lots of them myself, but this show topped the list of unbelievable feats.  My friend and I were so horrified and shocked at some of the tricks that apparently we were putting on a show of our own and the expressions on our faces were caught by a local newspaper photographer who put the photo on the front page of the Sunday St. Augustine newspaper!

Her and I also got to do girly stuff, and enjoyed talking and hanging out in sidewalk cafes like this one, just down the street from the restaurant where I work.

We spent two days on nearby Amelia Island, hanging out on the beach and where we had the pleasure of visiting Little Talbot Island State Park.  One of the features of this park is an area where many live oaks have fallen down onto the beach and now are amazing displays of driftwood.  Some of the most spectacular driftwood “sculptures” I have ever seen lined this beach for over a mile.  I highly recommend checking this place out if you are in the area.

Cap’t K was busy all week working, and kept out of our way as much as possible.  He has had about 5 “hooks” in the water looking for jobs, and some of them are starting to bite.  He quit his temp job this week and is starting some other projects now that we will report on soon.  They all involve boats, which is a vast improvement over the flourescent lit cubicle!

While this has overall, by northern Florida standards, been a relatively mild winter, we have had a few cold spells that have made us feel like we are still up in New England.  Like the past few days.  It got down BELOW FREEZING for about two brutal days.  On the water, and in the wind, of course, it feels even colder.  Our main goal in life for the past few days was to stay warm.  Thank goodness we have a little heater on board.  Actually, we have two, and we put them both to good use.  Way Happy came with a Cole Stove, which is a very wee wood or coal burning stove mounted on the wall in the main cabin.  There is a small stovepipe that goes out the roof. The stove is a bit high maintenance to operate, and in high winds it doesn’t work well due to the draft coming down the stove pipe, but all in all, we are happy to have the option of having the magical warmth of fire on our boat.  For fuel, we have been using a combination of charcoal briquets and fire starter logs that you can buy at the store.  We also have a small portable propane heater, that we have also been using, especially first thing in the morning when we are getting dressed!

And thank God for our awesome down comforter, which has kept us surprisingly toasty at night!

And all of our mega winter gear that we brought down here “just in case” has been put to good use the last few days.  I was about ready to get rid of a bunch of it, thinking “we are in Florida now, we don’t need this stuff”, and was scolding Cap’t K for keeping around massive ski gloves and neoprene face masks.  But he sure was glad to have them going to work on the scooter yesterday!

For an early Valentine’s Day we splurged and went out for a nice meal at my new favorite restaurant:  Le Bistro de Leon, an awesome French restaurant here in the historical district of St. Augustine.  It was such a memorable and delicious meal….I am still happily tasting it two days later!  If any of you come visit us in the near future, plan on going there with us, as I’m looking for excuses to go back there again!

And we do indeed have visitors on the way!  One of my best friends from Massachusetts is coming on Thursday to spend a whole week with us aboard Way Happy.  I’m very excited to have a friend come visit, and am planning outings for us that I’m sure you will all get to hear about.

So until then, we wish you all a Way Happy Valentine’s Day!!

Today I brought out our crappy camera (still saving up for a new one….soon!) and documented some of my day.

Starting with the morning commute with Cap’t K having breakfast on the run:

We were greeted at the dock by our friend the egret. (or is it heron?)

Then a little stroll through the quiet early morning streets of St. Augustine, past one of my favorite live oaks in the plaza.

This is the pedestrian street I go down every day to get to work. How cute is this?!

When I arrive at the restaurant I work at I am greeted by one of the owners, Jeanett.

And here is the lovely smiling face of the head cook and owner, Manny.

And here is the street I work on, as I finish work and head home….

Hi everyone! Thanks for continuing to check in with us on Way Happy. I realize our posts have become less frequent, and that is basically because we are both working full time and things feel a bit dull. Work, work, work, and not much else is going on, aside from the occasional dingy motor failure and rocky sleepless night on the boat. And here in Florida, we can barely even talk about the weather….it’s just sunny and nice every day! Boring! (Not really! We are totally appreciating the weather!!!)
Even our cat Mojo is bored:

I am happy to report, however, that our social life is improving. We have been making a concerted effort to get out and meet people and it seems to be working. We even got invited to a super bowl party at some new friends’ house, and even though we really are NOT football fans and could basically care less about professional sports, we went to the party and had a great time. Madonna was definitely the highlight of the evening, IMHO. Don’t y’all agree? She rocked it!

And, we have expanded our search for like-minded souls a bit outside the St. Augustine city limits. This weekend we went to Gainesville, which is about 90 minutes away by car. We found a crazy cheap deal on a car rental and zipped over to the Gator Capital to do some dancing. It was medicine! We have practiced a slightly obscure form of dancing called contact improvisation for many years and we found a group of people doing it once a month in Gainesville. So Cap’t K planned this surprise outing for me and took me to the contact improv jam. I was elated!! A big huge floor to move around on! That alone was worth the trip! We met a woman named Kristin who turned out to be a good friend of a good friend of ours, and she invited us to spend the night at her house. So we got to sleep in a real bed and hang out in a real house with a real cool person and it was fabulous.

And, we went to the Medieval Faire, which also happened to be going on in Gainesville.
Here are a few images from that wonderful place:

This guy wins the best costume award. And he’s TALL, I like TALL people!