What are the odds?

Kuta, Bali, Indonesia

There are those things you hear about but you assume the chances of them happening to you are just so scarce as to not even give it much thought.  Then, of course, it happens to you.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, so let’s start at the hotel.

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We managed to find a really nice place to stay for the few weeks we were on the beaches of Bali.  But “nice” has a lot of different meanings when you talk about international destinations…

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The Cancun of Australia

Kuta, Bali, Indonesia

Sailing out of Australia would have been a great idea except for two things:

1) We had arranged to meet Tiffany’s sister in Bali on a specific date.

2) Our work holiday visa in Australia was expiring fast.

As we’ve said before, a key element to being good crew is being able to be flexible.  Since we had to be somewhere at a specific time…oh and that our visas were set to expire in about 12 hours, flexibility was not something we had in abundance.

So a quick flight later and we found ourselves in what we’ve heard called the

 “Cancun of Australia”

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Working for a bed

Pittwater, NSW, AU

Living for free as volunteer crew on someone else’s yacht sounds all well and good while you’ve got a boat to live on but we are often asked what we do when we’re between yachts.

Our first few months in Australia are a good example.  After we left our work with the racing stable there was about a month before we found a job “sailing” in New Zealand and after that about another month before we decided the best way to celebrate the 4th of July was to get trapped in a genuine Australian blizzard.  Both of these situations were the same: too short a time to find a temporary position but too long to want to pay for a hotel in a country with a high cost of living.  So we had to answer the question –

What does a sailor do for a cheap night’s rest down under?

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Guys are not “cute”

Pittwater, NSW, AU

As we’ve previously stated, friendships lead to a lexicon whose size is directly proportional to the time invested in the relationship.  These lexicons lead to key phrases that communicate much more than the simple words involved when we are lucky enough to have been together long enough to be “in the know.”

It’s not just shared experiences like stumbling up the towering mountains of New Zealand that create this shared vocabulary.  Another source of this insiders verbiage is simply and consistently hashing out the meaning of words over time.  Because while two people may speak the same language, they probably don’t use the same words to describe the same things.  Example: what might be “cool” to one person may be “wicked” to another (“phat” could also be substituted.)  Though these words may be synonyms, there are variations of meaning that make each more appropriate at different times.

There is a difference between something that is “gross” and something else that is “disgusting.”  The choice of using either of these words describes more than just that fact that something is repulsive; there are nuances (for a 12 year old boy “gross” might be a good thing).

As a married couple (or anyone building a joint vocabulary) it is important to nail down these subtle differences in word use to more effectively communicate with each other.

We ran into this particular nugget of nuptial knowledge when Tiffany started calling Greg “cute.”  She meant it as a compliment and Greg took it as a bit of an insult.  Then Tiffany got confused:

Tiffany – “But you’re good looking.  That means you’re cute!”

Greg – “No.  Bunnies, baby horses and Mini Coopers are cute.  I am not.”

It was at this point that a working definition of the word “cute” had to be established…

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Semper Gumby

Opua, New Zealand

So there we were (doesn’t every great story start that way?) in Coff’s Harbour and little did we know that this would be the end of our Australian East Coast Adventure.

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We were doing a bit of work at a hostel in exchange for accommodation, deciding what our next move was going to be and looking at the boats available on FindACrew.net.  Huh.  Imagine that!  There was a boat in New Zealand looking for a couple of crew to help deliver it to Australia!  We got in touch with the owner, who was willing to pay us to fly out to his boat so he could get it delivered to a transport ship in Brisbane and sent back home to the US.

He seemed like a decent guy on the phone and since he paid for the flight, we decided to take a risk and were off back to New Zealand!

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Surf’s Up!

Coffs Harbor, NSW, AU

Our Australian East Coast Adventure continues!!

Ok, we all know why Greg says he’s from San Francisco right?

So what he didn’t mention was that this habit started when he was in at the Coast Guard Academy and the following conversation inevitably followed from meeting a new person at school:

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It’s Intuitive (and the Aussie fascination with Ned Kelly…)

On the road, Victoria, AU

The Australian East Coast Adventure continues!!

So we’re supposed to be bonding and stuff right?  That’s what we’ve been told us married people do whilst travelling together: we talk and whatnot…or get divorced.  True fact – travel either glues couples together or tears them apart.  Cabo San Lucas is well known as the sailing divorce capital of the West Coast.

Being as we are both more “in it for the long haul” types bonding is pretty much the order of the day.  One could begin to wonder though – after so much time together do we ever run out of things to talk about?

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