I often talk about the technical details of our boat-how something is maintained or how something was modified to improve the aspect of sailing. But over dinner last night Amy asked me why I never talk about some of the decorative things we've acquired for the inside of our vessel during our travels.

In truth, I never really thought it would be too interesting, but after thinking about it some, I realized she is right and since we're sort of sitting on the sidelines waiting out the hurricanes anyway, I decided to make this log about our "interior decorations" and as such, you die hard, cruise-of-death, man against nature types may just want to skip to the bottom.

We now interrupt your regularly scheduled sailing log.........

We've never been real "decorator" type people. In fact, when we moved aboard ten years ago, we brought not one picture, painting or knick knack. I'd like to tell you it was to keep our boat weight down or to increase sailing performance, but mostly it was because we didn't have any of that stuff in our land house either.

Now, as I sit below decks writing this log, I can look around at the few strictly decorative items we have and I realize there is a story behind each one of them and that some day, many years from now (hopefully) when we give up cruising, I'll take every one of them with me to whatever comes next.

The one true photograph we have on board is of our first weasel, Maggie. The picture is a black an white taken by my sister in law, Christi (Amy's brother's wife) when she and her husband Mark baby sat (weasel sat?) Maggie when Amy and I were away driving across the country. Christi brought it down to us during our first year out cruising when she came to visit us in Annapolis harbour for a weekend and later we found a simple frame to protect it from boat life..

Another sort of picture that was just added recently is this poster (shown side right ->) . I mentioned the story about how we acquired it as well as how we got it signed by the artist in another log here (link), so all I will say about it now is that the story did involve an elderly lady, a one armed man with a hammer and a ladder. Enough said.

We also have this palm frond fan was from a 92 year old Bahamian woman on Great Guana in the Exumas name Eustace. We used to see her every year sitting under a tree weaving palm fronds into rolls for sale to the straw market in Nassau.

One day when we walked by she was crying so we stopped to see if she was ok. After talking to her for a few minutes she calmed down and told us she was sad because her husband had died and she missed him.

As it turned out, her husband had been dead for over twenty five years and although I never did find out why she was crying on that day so many years after the fact, someone else on the island later told us that Eustace had an episode like this once a month or so.

As an aside, you didn't hear it from me, but the story got to Amy and tears were reported in her general area.

After the crying was finished Eustace invited us into her tiny house and then she spent the next two hours showing us pictures of her family, little knick knacks she had acquired over the years and then two big boxes of palm frond woven stuff she had made. When we got ready to leave she presented Amy with our little palm frond fan.

I felt bad about taking something as intricate as the fan and so over her protests, I made her take some money.

When we stopped at Black Point (her town) this year, her house appeared to be empty. I'm not sure if she passed away or went to stay with family, but we definitely missed seeing her.

Also in the palm frond category we have this pretty little basket that Miss Julie on Seaquel made for us. Whenever Super G and I are playing ball, Miss Julie sits in the shade of the palm trees and weaves away. There isn't any big story behind the basket except of course our friendship with George and Julie and all of memories we have of shared adventures along the way.

For that reason our basket is in fact "art" and not a kitchen appliance as some of you might have thought. Therefore, it fits into my "interior decorating" list of things.

And finally, we have a Bahamian friend named JR who lives on the little tiny island of Little Farmers Cay. He's an artist of sorts and he spends his days drinking rum and making wood carvings out of pieces of native "Lignum Vitae" trees. His carvings are varied, but center around traditional Bahamian themes.

We've known JR for a number of years and what started out as him trying to get us "tourists" to buy something has turned into a game where every time we meet, he offers up his best carvings and tries to get me to take them in exchange for Amy.

Now before the Femm-Nazis come out in force, JR isn't being disrespectful to Amy, he's just making a joke, so laugh. With her red hair and pale complexion, Amy is something of a rarity in the islands and so she tends to stand out. And hey, if she isn't offended, neither am I.

Anyway, this past year JR cornered me at a music festival on Great Exuma. The sheer size of his display was just awesome. He had over 500 pieces on display, some of which dated back twenty years. Over a couple of rum punches, we negotiated a deal on the piece seen at the top of this entry.

I like to think of it as my Bahamian Goddess of Rum, but I have no basis for that claim other than I do in fact like rum.

Ok, so there you have it, our sum total of interior boat decorations. We now resume your regular sailing stories.......