Rosa Linda Román (00:10): Hello and welcome to New Mexi-Castaways. I'm Rosa Linda Román and I am currently in the guest room of the s/v Dawn Treader, which is soon going to be Miss Allie's room. Allie is a babysitter who is coming from West Palm Beach to join us for part of our adventure, as we sail to The Bahamas. She just came down here from Pennsylvania to start school at Keiser University. And we found her through Sittercity after our liveaboard nanny that we brought with us from New Mexico, headed back to New Mexico. She missed her family. She was a little homesick, Miss Linda. And then Miss Allie started watching the kids and we asked her if she wanted to come with us for the first part of our sail. She has to be back to Florida by, I think it's like January 9th. And so she doesn't have that long, but it'll be nice to have the help in the beginning. Rosa Linda Román (01:34): And then this room will be converted to a guest room once again. The problem with this room is that the AC is broken and there is some kind of like stinky sewage smell, which is super nice, nice welcoming environment. And right now my sister, Sarah is visiting from Chicago. So she ah, poor Sarah, is experiencing all of that on her vacation. But everybody's pitching in, doing what they can as we prepare, because a weather window opened up for tonight December 7th, 2016 at the time of this recording. And it's not easy to get a weather window from Florida to The Bahamas this time of year. And what that basically means is that the, the winds have to go in the right direction or at least not go exactly opposing where you're trying to go. And so when a window opens you take it. Rosa Linda Román (02:32): Well, the problem with that is we have a lot of things that still have to be finished before we can actually leave. The biggest and most important of which is getting our watermaker fully installed. Nathan,and Allie's cousin's husband Dusty, are working together to install the watermaker, but some parts have still not arrived. So if those parts don't arrive, we cannot get the watermaker working and therefore we cannot lose sight of the shore. I mean, we have enough water to get us through for, I think we have a 200 gallon tank, something like that. So it could potentially carry us fine to The Bahamas, but we don't like to risk it. One of those important things, heavenforbid you get lost at sea, one of the things you can't live without is water. So, we are hoping that comes in, but there's mixed feelings about that as a matter of fact, among our little crew, because while I'm hoping it gets fixed before tonight, cuz we would leave it like two in the morning and, and sail to The Bahamas. Not everyone on our crew feels that way. One of the ones that is not wanting to leave today is, or tonight is my daughter Ahava. Now if you've followed any of our adventures, she's been the, the biggest cheerleader in favor of leaving and sailingand being aboard. So it kind of took me by surprise this morning when she very tearfully started crying and saying she did not want to go. And not want to go today, at least. And I, I said, what do you mean you don't wanna go? I thought you were the one that wanted to go more than anyone. And the answer is that she loves her gymnastics team. She has made great friends on this team and does not want to say goodbye yet. They, and what she doesn't know, which makes me even sadder to make her leave before she's ready, is that the team is trying to put together a little going away celebration for her. Rosa Linda Román (04:40): And I don't think they're gonna be able to pull it off tonight because they have gymnastics. So I think they were gonna try to do something for her this weekend. But as of right now, if the window opens, we have to take it. So again, if the watermaker isn't installed and we don't have everything done, cuz we also have someone working on the generator, fixing, I don't know, tuning it up, whatever has to be done. So if that stuff doesn't get done, then we're not going anyway. But if it does get done, that leaves us with a quandary. You know, I mean my, I, I want to make the crossing as when we can, because the problem is, if you don't make this weather window, the next weather, it looks like won't be for another...now I'm in the kids' room, another fan and I'm loud. I'm gonna turn that off. Hang on one second. I am working on organizing and putting things away right now while the kids are off the boat with Miss Allie in search of Pokemon Go, which I just stupidly, I let them download today because I say stupidly because it took a good hour of my time just to facilitate that, to sign in and create the account. But anyway, I, I had ally leave the boat with them so that I could get some of these Hanukkah presents hidden underneath Ahava has this really cool room, which I'm about to climb into in a second. Her room is, basically, we converted the forward hold into a bedroom and that is Ahava's room. It's tiny. And most people would not even consider it a room, but for her, it is wonderful because it's her first room that she's ever had all to herself. Rosa Linda Román (06:23): So she is very excited about it anyway. So I'm trying to put all the Hanukkah and other gifts in there while they are off the boat, because I don't want them to see everything. And that's part of this prep that we're doing is trying to really think through what will we need for this whole adventure. And you don't really know, but you can plan some of the things like you know, holiday gifts or decorations, those kinds of things. When we lived on, we lived on a boat, for those of you that are new to the podcast, we moved on to this boat about almost five months ago now, right? June, July, August, September, October, November. Yeah. So almost six months ago. No, five months ago, we moved on to the s/v Dawn Treader , but we lived on a boat when Ahava and Ziva were little. And it was called s/v Hakuna Matata. And when we lived on Hakuna Matata, we were sailing at the time that when it was Halloween. And so we actually, I brought, I snuck all this stuff onto the boat without them knowing. And we did, we had a, all these Halloween decorations plus we made a lot of stuff and they remember this Halloween that we did very fondly as their, you know, as something that they really enjoyed and was their best Halloween ever. Which is hilarious, because we were on an island with no other people and we just made the most of whatever we had with us at the time. So that's the kind of, that's the idea of what we're doing right now with trying to prep everything for the holidays. Bring what I can so that we can do projects and things and enjoy the time that we have when we're sailing and at a remote island for Hanukah and New Years. I wanna get some New Years noise makers and hats and things for, so that we have that on board. Rosa Linda Román (08:34): When we, wherever we will be to celebrate, I'm hoping we get to be doing the Junior Junkanoo for New Years. We did that when the girls were two, I guess they were two and four and we lived on the island of Hope Town temporarily. And that was an amazing experience. And I hope my kids get to experience it again. Let me pause that. I think the kids might be coming out back. Alright, the kids came back from looking for Pokemon or whatever they were doing. So I'm gonna take a break and I will come back in a little bit. Rosa Linda Román (09:16): Okay, here we go. I'm going down to my bedroom, which I'm closing because my daughter's piano is on the bed right here. And she will know right away if she sees the box, which I do not want, you would like to surprise her. So I'm going to keep them out. Plus it's cool down here. I have the AC on and it's quiet, relatively. There's a fan. You can hear that noise, but it's not as echoy. And it's nice. It's funny because as I look around, there's still so much to do that. It's not even funny. My, we do not have curtains on the windows because, so let me back up. So I mentioned, we had that fire on the boat next to us and everything had to be cleaned and something, some repairs had to be made like to our sail bag and sail. Rosa Linda Román (10:23): Actually we had to get a new sail bag because it was burned and the sail itself had to be patched in some places because the heat rose and damaged our sail. But inside the boat, there was also smoke damage. And so we, we had to have a woman come and clean all of our linens and bedding and mattresses and oh my gosh, this keyboard is gorgeous. I wish you guys could see this. It's an Alesis, Alesis Recital 88 key digital piano. And I'm so excited for my daughter because she misses music. She misses her friends and she misses her piano teacher. I can't bring her friends, but at least I can get her piano to practice on. It's actually huge. So that might be a challenge, but she'll find a place to put it. It looks good. It's really good. Rosa Linda Román (11:18): So anyway, back to the, the curtains, we don't have curtains on the boat because they took them as part of the cleaning, the inside process. And then they, the cleaner that did the cleaning of it just the left them completely crumpled up and wrinkled and looking horrible. And I was like, this is not right. We had beautifully pleaded curtains on the boat and then, you know, they took them and then made it look horrible. So the lady who was like the job coordinator, project manager, I guess is what you would call it. Right. She told them they needed to take it back and, and like re- you know, iron it, pleat it, whatever, press it and pleat it. Well, the next step was we got 'em back completely... I mean, first of all, it wasn't even a good pressing job. Rosa Linda Román (12:15): It still was wrinkled, but they had ironed out all of the pleats, like, so it wasn't, it was no longer as wrinkled, but all of the beautiful pleats were completely gone. Just ironed over. I was like, wait a second. And so I had to spend hours just prepping the curtains and trying to fold them in such a way, so they could be steamed and (you can hear all these boxes, that's hilarious) so that they could, they had to be pressed and, you know, redone. So I finally got 'em back to the lady who was doing the project managing the cleanup job and she steamed them herself. So they are, and she was supposed to come back and actually install them, but she kept having these other projects and other delays, and she wanted to come and do the installation when my family was having Shabbat dinner, which is when we don't work. Rosa Linda Román (13:13): And I said, at that point I was like, just leave them and we'll put 'em up. Well, it's a huge like puzzle to try to figure out which curtain goes where. And so we ended up not ,they haven't been installed yet, which is hilarious. So at this point we have curtains, they look like they're probably in good shape,pleated, but they're just kind of strapped and put to the side and haven't been hung yet. So hopefully eventually we will have both curtains on the windows and cushions on the seats, because currently we are using our cushions to block out all the sun because we don't have curtains. So it's been an interesting, interesting time. So now I'm pulling out another one of Ziva's gifts and it is a piano stand. And it's massive also. So I have no idea how, where she's gonna put all this. It is so funny. It's huge, but it's in good shape and good quality. I feel like I got my money's worth at least. So that's very good. So yeah, that's what I'm working on. I'm sure there's lots more I need to talk about, but I'm gonna take a little break and see if I can get my sister who is here visiting from Chicago to come down here and hang out with me and talk to me while I work on figuring out what's in all of these packages. So I'm gonna take a break and I'll be right back. Rosa Linda Román (14:52): Wow. With the hustle and bustle and everything going on. It is virtually impossible for me to actually finish this podcast and also impossible for me to get all this stuff done on my to-do list. It's easy to get distracted and I'm finally starting to cut into these packages and figure out what's in 'em so that I can make sure everything has arrived and that I'm gonna seal 'em all up again so that I can put 'em down in the lower hold before we sail. So that's what I'm working on and it's very distracting. I got a call from my dad who was very worried about us making the crossing. I did a Facebook live for him. I mean, not for him, I did a Facebook live in general and he, I guess my mom showed it to him, and so it made him nervous. And yeah, so he was worried, but I tried to explain to him, we're gonna be very conservative. We're only gonna cross when the weather is clear and we should be okay. But he tends toward the worrying side of the spectrum anyway. So yeah. I need to take a picture of this room. It's pretty funny. I've got stacks and stacks of boxes. I can count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 20, 21, 22, 23 from here. And there's another couple in the other hold. So like two dozen things, at least. All right. It sounds like my family just got back. So I'm hoping that we'll involve some kind of dinner. So I'm gonna just tell you it's a crazy time, crazy busy. And I will try to fill you in as, as much as I can if, and when we make the crossing. But for now I got work to do so I'll talk to you soon. Have a great day. And thanks for listening to New Mexi-Castaways.