Outta Here :))

We finally checked out today and are leaving first thing in the morning. We are heading for Anguilla for a rest. We want to play. Our future updates will be more about the Islands and cruising life, than work so stay tuned and we will update with some good stuff soon. Until then we will be out sailing :) and enjoying.

Final Preparations

We're making our final preparations to leave Sint Maarten....the major work is done and we're finishing up the little things. All the navigation lights are working now, it might have taken us a little longer that we thought, because of Mike's new tradition of taking siesta's....look at that innocent face...back to work. We have the water maker plumbed in but haven't started it yet, cause the water in the lagoon ain't the cleanest. We start provisioning the boat now and we'll set a departure date.
Lots of excitement in the lagoon as the winds have been gusting up to 30 knots. A guy from the boat yard launched a couple of days ago and anchored right next to us. He dragged all night and the next day, at one point we went over and helped him re-anchor. Mike was driving the boat around the lagoon while the guy cleaned the mud off of his anchor and I tried to help Mike by telling him what was in front of him - not good visibility from this guys cockpit. His anchor is a Claw and he swears by it......in our opinion it makes a terrible anchor, but it makes a great channel dregging tool :)
In between the gusts of 25 knots we had to climb the mast to fix all the lights, we didn't think to check it when we had the mast off in the boat yard..lesson learned. So Mike goes halfway up the main mast to fix the deck light and steaming light...he wanted down. He told Kim it was her turn to learn to climb the mast, and she should go to the very top to change the bulb in the Navigation light. Mike likes it better at the bottom. The wind seemed to gust as soon as Mike started to climb, but when it was Kim's turn, calm...we were also battleing the rain that day little squalls would come in, off course only when Mike was up :) So now there's work to do on the Mizzen mast...guess who's going up..yup-Kim.
Here's a picture of our anchorage from the top. The boat you see directly behind us is called Pura Vida - a pure life. They seem to like to run around naked, so sometimes we eat inside the boat. We saw them on the beach on Christmas too...yup naked. Bye the way there like 60, and the son is about our age. Lots of good stories in the anchorage. At night we just relax and watch the sunset, the boats and the neighbors and hope they have some clothes on.
Our first destination will be Anguilla, we're going to take a day sail and have some fun, then go over to Road Bay, drop the anchor - take a much needed break from boat work and explore the island, read some books and figure out our next destination. It's all good here and we wish everyone back home well. Cheers Mike and Kim

The Good Life

Just a quick update..we have wireless connection now, but the connection is slow and unreliable where we are (it's free access at Shrimpy's so we can't complain :) We are now on a mooring. It belongs to someone we met in the boatyard, and they are not ready to go in the water yet, so we traded our air conditioner for it's use till we leave. It's really nice, we have a great view. We are almost there, just a few more projects and we can head out the bridge and start our first cruise. Till later, Mike and Kim

SPLASH!!!!

FINALLY - all the standing rigging replaced and we splashed the boat. Captain Mike expertly steered Ka'imi through very narrow channels to the FKG riggers where we had the new roller furling installed and then spent the night on their docks. It was great to finally be in the water, and our biggest joy was being able to use our own bathrooms and not walk through dirt and fiberglass city to relieve yourself and take a cold shower in muratic acid rinsed showers.......they don't know what Drano is here they use Muratic acid to clear the drains - however - that doesn't work so you end up with really white feet.


The next day we left FKG's dock and Captain Mike took us back through the narrow channels and we finally anchored in the lagoon at the Witches tit. We got the Main Sail and shade cover on then spent a very relaxing evening enjoying our new home, playing backgammon and realizing what a great life we have!!!!!! The only problem we had at FKG was when they asked for the sheets to finish installing the Genoa Sail....Mike looked at Kim very puzzled - that was a big mistake, cause Kim had the deer in the headlights look. Finally after a couple of uhs - Mike finally asked what a sheet was, just before Kim was about to grab the bedsheets. Their lines - the ones you use on the sails - need to read up on our terminology I guess....
Captain Mike in the dinghy checked out the snubber line and took a couple of pictures of Ka'imi finally settled in. The last pic is a view from our cockpit. We are doing very well, taking a couple of days off to relax, though we still have to run errands. Then we'll start working on things above the water line, and in a couple weeks take off for our first shakedown cruise, most likely Anguilla. We're looking forward to New Years and maybe we can even stay up till midnight this year on New Years Eve - since were sooo relaxed. Till the next time - Happy New Year to you, cheers from Ka'imi

Christmas Day

We had an excellant Christmas. We took the day off and went to the beach. It was a beautiful day!!This was Captain Mike enjoying the plunge, he needed a day off. All boat projects were finished so the day really was relaxing.

Kim took her wine and stayed in the water most of the day, and the Captain looked on.


If anybody was wondering where Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer was this year, she was here in St. Maarten - we found her. After spotting Rudolph Kim had to find a phone to make her Christmas phone calls. The only problem was we forgot our new zip code so we couldn't charge them to our card. Kim had to call her mom collect and relay messages to everybody. Sorry Kris and Linda that I couldn't call and Happy Belated Birthday to Linda, Kim's sis.

Merry Christmas from the Caribbean

Merry Christmas
Well, were still in the boat yard, but at least the Captain has had a cup of coffee. The good news is we are set to go in the water this Thursday, the 22nd, so by Christmas we should be anchored off in the lagoon. We have made friends in the boat yard, and have a wide variety of animals here. This is our neighbor cat. There are many other cats and dogs wandering around, so we have lots of company. We've completed alot of projects and are waiting on the completion of the rest. The dinghy davits are repaired, we've bleeded the fuel from our new tanks to the engine, we've sanded the bottom and will put the first coat of bottom paint on Tuesday, we will get the rest of rigging to the riggers on Monday so the new rigging and new roller furler will be ready to go on Friday morning. They are putting us in the water on Thursday, and will leave us in the bay overnight so we can get the motor going alright. We have been working from dawn to dusk, so we decided to pay a local kid to polish the hull, wish we'd thought of this before :) he's only charging $100 to do the whole thing. We could of saved some achy muscles on the boat bottom sanding if we'd known it would be this cheap.We are still waiting on the guy who manufactured our fuel tanks to finish some stuff for us. He also has to come out and fix the batteries. When we load tested the batteries we found out that when they replaced the tank and put the batteries back in they did it all backwards, this explains why our battery voltage wasn't reading right.Happy Birthday to Kristopher (he's the one on the left), Kim's son, he turned 27 on December 14th!!! He's still living in Hawaii, and Kim misses him alot. Happy Birthday Baby!!!
All our love to our family and friends and we wish you a very Merry Christmas. The next time we write, we will probably, officially be boat people :)

What can we say, still here

Good morning all, don't mind the Captain he hasn't had his coffee yet. Still have some work to do to get out of the boatyard but we've accomplished a few more projects. The fuel gauges got installed, we painted and changed out the chain in our steering pedestal. We've polished the chain plates to get ready for the new rigging .



And of course then there is the end of a long day when we can see all the work that we've done and know we are one day closer to getting in the water!!!! Cheers Mike and Kim

Still Working

Hello all we're doing fine and moving right along. Mike is back on his feet, his foot infection has completely healed and he is doing great. We've had a diesel mechanic out here working on the engine to make sure she is in good condition when we take off. The mechanic is an old salt named Ray Longbottom and he is the greatest guy, he's been at sea since he was young and has stories to tell. He also knows everything there is to know about diesel engines and been quite willing to share the info with us. He is one of the good people that we have enjoyed meeting. His assistant Soie was also very kind, on the day our shipment was to arrive, he left us his cell phone so we could keep in contact with the port and the guy who was to deliver. We didn't even have to ask, he heard Kim having trouble using her cell phone and just offered. He left it overnight too......speaking of our shipment everything has arrived.
We spent a couple days sorting through it and putting it away. What didn't fit we figured we didn't need. We traded all the stuff we were going to toss to Willie, a local guy who works in the boatyard, for helping us with a few projects. One of which was taking down the rigging. The surveryor had told us we needed new rigging for the mizzen mast, but we've also decided to do it for the main mast since it is already 6 years old and we want to be safe rather than sorry.
We're still in the boat yard working on various projects. We've accomplished quite a bit but won't go into all of them. Mike has updated our propane tank system and we have gas to the barbeque and the new stove inside (by the way the new stove works awesome). We've also installed a new faucet on the sink, which makes doing the dishes a lot easier. We haven't had much time for play as were trying to get out of the boat yard as soon as possible. But we look forward to sharing the more exciting parts of living in the Caribbean soon, until then we wish everyone well, and we must get back to work!
Cheers Mike and Kim on Ka'imi :)

Caribbean Thanksgiving

We searched Sint Maarten in the dinghy looking for the perfect new stove for Ka'imi and to cook our Thanksgiving dinner (the traditional Pizza and salad). We finally found the perfect one with 3 burners, a nice oven and a broiler to make toast. After we found the oven we had to search for a store to provision. We found a great one on the French side and stocked up on a few items. It was then time to test it all out and start cooking. The food is excellant here and we love having the time to finally cook it ourselves. Shrimp, rice, cheeses and some great wines from the french side, and the occasional veggie burger. We're going back to french side today to get Mike a great big steak since we got the barbeque up and running.
We're getting ready to repaint the name on the boat to Ka'imi, install the raw water strainer, fix dinghy davits, paint the bottom, replace a few hose and through hull fittings and if we find nothing else, then we'll launch the boat. Cheers from Sint Maarten, Mike and Kim

Life in Dry Dock

Cheers from Sint Maarten. We're settled onto the boat living in the boat yard. Quit a experience.....but we're loving it!!! Michael had a minor misshap, his foot got infected and swelled up like a balloon. We went to the doc and he gave him some antibiotics, a diuretic and pain pills. All of this for just $35, doc visit $25 and meds $10. At home we would have had to pay twice that plus our insurance premiums. Life is good here. The doc told him to stay off it for 3 days, so we've been taking it easy a bit. We have our new car a 10' dinghy and call her Weedie. With the 15 hp motor she goes fast...it's a blast. Since we can't swim in the lagoon we take the dinghy to the ocean about once a day and tie up to a mooring ball so Kim can get her swimming fix. It's so much easier running errands in the dinghy, there's no traffic and just about everything is accessible by water.
At the end of the day we usually kick back in the cockpit for some R&R and check out our view. The boats in the water that you see is where we will anchor after we get out of the boatyard to finish up any odd jobs on the boat. We pick up the stuff we had shipped over here tomorrow so we have to find places aboard to store it. But were looking forward to getting the tools so we can get some major work done (and the air conditioner is sounding pretty good right now :). It's hot, hot here, how's the weather where you are? Everything here is going great, we have met some very nice and interesting people. A local guy, Macklan, has helped us out a couple of times with different projects, he's a great guy. The mosquitos here are crazy...they love Michael - he must taste really good cause they eat him up, they don't bother Kim unless Mike's not around, so wherever Mike goes to sleep, Kim follows :)))
Tomorrow we clean out the water tanks so we can actually drink the water on board. Up to now we've had to buy it. Forgive us for the humdrum updates, we haven't had much of a chance to get out and explore because we want to get the boat into the water as soon as possible. We'll take pics of the interesting things on the island as soon as we get a chance to tour a little more. That's all for now, we wish everyone well. Cheers Mike and Kim

Move Aboard Day

Today we move aboard Ka'imi, get our dinghy and return the rental car. We spent yesterday cleaning out the boat to make her livable and to free some space for our stuff. We went to the store while we had the car to provision the boat with some necessities. Mike got the tabbing done under the master bed, so we could put the mattress back and have a place to sleep. We forgot to pack some sheets, so today we have to find a place or we'll be sleeping on towels, cause we each have one of those :)...... We put some stuff aboard and then had a great dinner aboard Ka'imi last night. This update will be the last for awhile. We don't have internet access anymore so we will have to go to the internet cafes to update. Isn't it great that life can be such an adventure. Until next time, Cheers Mike and Kim on Ka'imi.

Sint Maarten Pics

Here's a link to some of our photos. We will add photos of Sint Maarten to this link as we have access. http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/klangelk/album?.dir=/8763&.src=ph

Another Day in Paradise

We worked until 12:00 noon today and then decided we needed a break. Why.......because we can :) We closed up Ka'imi went to lunch, then headed for the beach. It was a beautiful day as always.

A storm came in so we headed to the hotel, dried off then went to Ka'imi for dinner and cocktails. Life's good here in Sint Maarten.....Cheers Mike and Kim