Wednesday July 10th, 2002
Happy Birthday Curt!

"Did you ever think you'd spend it in the Caribbean living on a sailboat?" Today was the first of Curt's birthdays that we'll spend together. The pressure was on to find a meaningful gift while we're sailing in a remote group of islands without much civilization, as well as to make his day feel like a festive celebration.

He got to open his first two gifts in the morning: a beautiful sunny Caribbean day. Back when we were in Bequia, a little mariner's bookshop had a handsome offering of scrimshaw collectibles: buck knives, pocketknives, wine openers, key chains and necklaces, etc. The themes engraved on them were perfect. There were little etchings of whales, mermaids, clippers ships etc. carved onto camel bone (they used to be whale bone- but that's illegal now so they use camel). Curt has at least six different types of Swiss Army knives aboard, so I thought a really nice one he could keep years from now would be a nice piece of memorabilia from our adventure. The one I chose has a scene of a ship coming into harbor while a girl greets them with a wave from shore. His second gift was a tee shirt that, on the front says, "Work less." And the back says, "Sail more." Kinda hokey, but appropriate enough.

In the afternoon, True Blue joined us for a hike around the island of Mayreau and then for lunch at Dennis' Hideaway. It was a nice, quiet afternoon and we had a few rum punches to help celebrate. On the way back we passed a beach vendor selling sarongs, and shirts. Curt found a groovy Caribbean themed shirt that caught his fancy and he sheepishly asked what I thought of it. Well, who am I to deny the birthday boy his wishes, so we bought it. Now that we look at the shirt- it looks a bit more like it should be part of a Halloween costume, but- hey, it's part of a great memory.

We capped the day off with dinner on True Blue and Curt fittingly had a home baked key lime pie instead of birthday cake this year.

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