TOP 5 NAUTICAL THEME DRINKS

What is a “Shipwreck”?  Is it any good?  Basically any combination of rum and anything can be called a shipwreck. Try googling shipwreck recipe. You'll get any number of concoctions!  We lost count after 25 different recipes!

Anyhow, we think these are the TOP Nautical Theme Drinks ever made!  We haven't vetted all of them with friends, but we think that they are novel, if not down right naughty and nautical! 
So, what are the best nautical theme drinks?  You tell us!

Port And Starboard
1 tblsp Grenadine
1/2 oz Green Creme de Menthe
Pour carefully into a pousse-cafe glass, so that creme de menthe floats on grenadine. Serve without mixing.

Buoy shot
2 oz. Captain Morgan rum
4 oz. orange juice
A splash of cherry juice
To get the best effect for this shot, it should be served in an hourglass-shaped shot glass, which is also used for bomb shots. Otherwise, any glass will do.

Island Affair
1 1/4 oz melon liqueur
1/2 oz Cointreau® orange liqueur
1/3 oz Blue Curacao liqueur
1 1/2 oz orange juice
2 oz mango juice
1 oz whipped cream
Shake melon liqueur, cointreau and juices and strain into a pina colada glass three-quarters filled with broken ice. Add curacao, and float cream on top. Garnish with fruit, and serve with straws.

Absolut Salty Dog
1 1/2 oz Absolut® Peppar vodka
5 oz. grapefruit juice
¼ teaspoon salt
Pour all ingredients over ice cubes in a highball glass. Stir well and serve.

A Little Dinghy
2 shots Captain Morgan® Parrot Bay coconut rum
2 shots Malibu® coconut rum
cranberry juice
pineapple juice
orange juice
Serve in a highball glass

Cabin Cooler
16 oz Absolut® Raspberri vodka
16 oz Captain Morgan® Parrot Bay coconut rum
8 oz cranberry juice
4 oz ginger ale
Combine all ingredients in a pitcher and chill, preferably in ice. Pour into suitable glasses. Garnish rim of each glass with a lime slice, and serve.

Sex with the Captain
1 1/2 oz Captain Morgan® Original spiced rum
1 oz amaretto almond liqueur
1 oz peach schnapps
fill with 1/2 cranberry juice
fill with 1/2 orange juice

Swashbuckler
1.5 oz Captain Morgan® spiced rum
cream soda
ice
Garnish with orange slice and maraschino cherry.

Fog Horn
1 1/2 oz gin
1 oz Rose's® lime juice
8 oz ginger ale
Stir ingredients together in a collins glass filled with ice cubes, and serve.

Tomorrow We Sail
3 1/2 oz Champagne
1/2 oz LBV port
1/2 oz dark rum
1 tsp triple sec
Serve in a champagne flute. Garnish with orange twist.

Armada Martini
6 parts vodka
2 parts amontillado sherry
Orange twist
Combine. Stir. Strain into glass and garnish with orange twist.

Low Tide Martini
6 parts vodka
1 part dry vermouth
Lime twist
1 teaspoon clam juice
Olive stuffed with smoked clam
Combine liquid ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice, shake well. Strain. Garnish with clam-stuffed olive.

Deep Sea Martini
6 parts Gin
2 parts dry vermouth
½ teaspoon Pernod
1 dash orange bitters
Combine, stir, strain into cocktail glass. Enjoy.

Quarterdeck Martini
6 parts berry vodka
1 part maraschino liqueur
1 part grapefruit juice
Fresh mint sprig
Combine all. Stir. Strain into a cocktail glass, garnish with mint.

Maritime Martini
6 parts gin
2 parts dry vermouth
Anchovy-stuffed olive
Combine liquid ingredients with ice, shake, strain. Garnish with anchovy-stuffed olive.

p.s. I think when I become an official Yacht club member, I will serve "Tomorrow We Sail" onboard. For the Holiday Lighted Boat Parade, maybe "Sex With the Captain"!

It's Fall!

This is the first Saturday morning in 3 weeks that I've had to lay in bed as long as I want then troll around with a cup of coffee for as long as I want.  It seems like heaven!  Sure, there are a ton of things we could be doing to fix up Lil'Wheels and Training Wheels.  We could don our weekend warrior masks and tackle the boom remake or sanding the mast.   But, why?  Can't I just sit here and drink coffee? 

There will always be work to do.  But, this is the perfect day for reading Moby Dick!  It is overcast and cool outside.  No reason to rush over to the dock just to get cold and wet through to the bones.  Last month I finished Treasure Island and Mutiny on the Bounty.  I think both books are wonderful and quaint.  They remind me of the boyhood I never had.  Just fun adventures all around.  I was just a serious little girl growning up!  I think that Moby Dick will be more on the serious side!  I'll let you know!

This First Mate is Trying to Distract Herself

I've enjoyed the last month.  I've had time to get myself together. I joined bookins.com.  I do like the site, but I have yet to receive a book.  I have expensive taste I guess.

I bought the crazy sexy purple Dyson vacuum cleaner.  Wondering how long vacuuming will distract me.

Went gluten-free.  Love it.  Will have to teach Truman to read labels again.

Met Jesus.  I can keep coming back to this one. 

But, at the end of the day, I'm just waiting for my captain to come home.

Knowing When to Turn Back

I am so proud of my husband, my Captain.  He is single handing a 61' sailboat at night in the middle of the Pacific ocean!  Two hours on, two hours off, all night long . . . until sunrise.  The sheer exhaustion of it!  Think about it!

I think, probably more than anything, I am impressed that three grown men can make the tough decision to turn back.  The point at which a person makes the choice to give up a goal, change course, cut their losses, throw in the towel, that is the point where they face their pride, their own ambition and glory-lust, the possibility of failure, and the cost of each.  I am proud of all three of them!

The bad news is that we have been in a storm that is going the same direction we are for that last 2 days causing heavy seas. The good news we have been cruising along at almost 7 knots and did about 170 miles yesterday.  Right now we are still 360 miles to Oahu and that should take 4-5 days. But we are getting closer. Can't wait for to get home and get dry. With the storms everything is damp, even the clothes I haven't worn yet. Except the ones in the zip lock you sent with me. Tough to type still, got to go. Luv, T

Day 11, aboard Go For Broke.  Delivered by satellite phone via OCENS.mail software.

The Glass is Half Full

I sat in the spa alone with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand.  The high tide waves were audible crashing in the background.  The first winter squash of the season was in the oven and the smell in the house was nothing short of divine!  Today was a good day.  I went to church.  I tithed.  I had a solid afternoon nap.  I spoke to my father on the phone and my mother-in-law today.  I went for a leisurely evening run with a new Morro Bay friend.  I can’t see any down side here!

One might be tempted to argue that the second turning back of Go For Broke is a failure of human endeavor. It would be more accurate to say that we humans might have been forcing a thing that was never meant to be.  As for my part, again, I cannot see much of a downside here. I don’t know how else to say it, but I have a tremendous peace about the whole thing. Of course, I am not on the boat, but for whatever it is worth, I think that the glass is half full.

Truman’s goal was to go for a long sail and learn a lot. Has that not happened? I think that there is always more to be learned in complicated times than in easy-breezy ones. This has been my experience anyways. I cannot see how he could come home and not have learned an amazing amount about sailing, crewing, boat maintenance, and navigation. It cost us very little for him to learn all this. In comparison, I hope that Steve makes out good on the cost of the boat. I cannot see how he can come out of this situation anything but the wiser. And that is priceless!

The Mate will play while the Captain is away . . .

Labor Day weekend was really relaxing!  I did everything I wanted to do: went running twice, had dinner and bbq with friends, worked on Lil' Wheels with my marinerette-mate, juiced and cooked vegan, and slept when I felt like it, and read a ton of books! 

The best book I read which warrants mention is:
The Promise of Sleep by William Dement, MD, PhD (not pictured because I already lent it out!)

I cannot say enough about this book!  I think everyone has to read it!  Dr. Dement makes the argument that we are mostly sleep-deprived, or sleep-negligent, individuals who cannot perform optimally due to our sleep debt.  If we treat our real sleep needs like calories then we'd take better care of ourselves.  Through reading this book I have been empowered to give my brain and body the rest that it needs.

I've had three people tell me that I should buy a kindle or nook in the last week.  Do you have one?  Do you like it?

2 Voices, 2 Blogs

Some readers have asked me if I write this blog on my own.  Well, the Captain and I have both been writing! Sometimes we work together on one post, sometimes he writes it, sometimes I do. 

For the next 25 days or so, I'll be writing this blog all by my little matey self while my Captain is crewing a boat from Hawaii to Morro Bay!  You can follow his sail adventure with professional Captain, Lynn, and boat owner on the blog S/V Go For Broke (on our blogroll).  He left for Hawaii this morning!

Meanwhile, I will be exploring provincial life, cooking homemade tortillas, fixing up Lil' Wheels, increasing the quality and restfulness of my sleep, and juicing for vibrant health!  Stay tuned!  I think this time apart will be a spiritual experience for both the Captain and I!

~The First Mate

Anniversary

We celebrated the end of our Anniversary Week by riding our beach cruisers to the Yacht club for Friday Night Social.  I met lots of nice people, most of whom the Captain has already met or sailed with.  One lady, Judy, is the coordinator for the Writer's conference that we are attending in September.  It was nice to get the inside scoop on the conference. I can't wait! We also saw a couple who have a catamaran.  They want to sail to Catalina--a 3day sail--but they had trouble finding a crew for the 10 day trip. I told my Captain to crew for them, but they had already downsized to a couple 3 day trips in the area. The Captain was tentative about the whole ten days but will probably join them on one of the short trips.

I really hope that Truman can sail with them.  It would be such a wonderful learning experience.  I would have to stay at home to work, but he would have such a memorable time!  At any rate, we are happy and healthy here on the waterfront.  It is a blessing to be able to be here.  Clean water, clean air, healthy living and good loving.  I cannot ask for more!  Thank you, Lord!

He Said, She Said

We are approaching another anniversary: one more year of marriage; one year as Captain and First Mate. It was on our last wedding anniversary, one year ago, that the idea of owning a boat first came up.

He Said

I wasn’t sure that the First Mate would go for it, but even after all these years she can surprise me. I thought it would be viewed as another hobby/sporting event that would require more time apart. She was actually very enthusiastic about having a project together and becoming the first mate. So after a year of cleaning, sanding, painting, and more cleaning I am happy to say that I think it was a good decision. We have had some good times along with the hard work. The BBQ’s with friends, learning new things, and sunset cruises have created the kind of quality time and memories that this Captain would highly recommend!

She Said

I was really excited when Truman took the sailing class at the yacht club last year. I have always gotten seasick, like with deep-sea fishing and whale watching trips, so I never considered that I would actually sail with him. But our harbor is really quiet so I started to entertain the idea of floating around, sunbathing, wine-drinking, and generally looking like Goldie Hawn on Overboard. Then I started thinking about getting my hands dirty and “taking it all out on the boat.” Sanding and painting, waxing and washing are free therapy sessions! And Truman has always wanted to buy a boat and possibly live aboard. What wife could possibly resist the opportunity to give her husband a little slice of his dream? I said, “Yes, let’s do it,” and the next week we went out and bought the boat!

Novel Sunday

Watching the video of the whale crashing on the sailboat made me want to read Moby Dick!  I've never read this classic novel!  I am ashamed to admit it.  Well, I looked in my bookshelf and confirmed what I suspected to be true: I don't own Moby Dick.  But, I do own Mutiny on the Bounty!

So, I started reading this seft-proclaimed "greatest sea story of all time" after making the pate yesterday.  I am only on page 33 and it has pulled me in!  I am enthralled!  It is the story of a young man from Wales who is recruited on a 90 foot boat with 40 other men to travel to Tahiti and collect breadfruit and write a Tahitian-English dictionary.  The story takes place only a couple years after Captain Cook has made his famous journey to the South Seas. 

I'm rivetted!  This is a whole other level of poetry and depth to the sailor's life....well, to the First Mate's life more precisely!  What book will be next?  Old Man and the Sea?  Robinson Crusoe?  There are so many sailing themed classics worth reading!

It is time to make a pot of coffee on this gloomy Sunday morning and hunker down with my book and the Captain's Star Trek Snuggie!

Pâté Saturday!

I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred,
I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is probably nothing better than a glass of red wine and a slice of French bread with homemade Pâté! This may be one of the most romantic combinations of food available on the face of Estero Bay! Fodder for poetry, just begging for a breathtaking sunset accompaniment . . . Hemingway would be jealous!

Red wine contains many wonderful antioxidants. For women, one glass a day is all that you need. More than one glass a day increases your risk for heart attack, stroke, and breast cancer, and any number of horrible ailments. For healthy wine drinking, I refer to a culturally appropriate book, French Women Never Get Fat. The author describes the French effort of conscious consumption, taste awareness, and sensual appreciation.  And French bread is not hard to celebrate! There is some wonderful bread available locally: La Parisienne, Carlock’s Bakery, and the Old Cayucos Bakery and Deli to name a few!

Pâté may be harder to find, harder to understand the celebration if you’ve never tried it, but certainly worth the effort. Pâté usually includes chicken liver cooked with mushrooms and herbs then pureed and chilled into a sliceable and spreadable constitution. Liver, an organ meat, is extremely rich in fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E & K, essential fatty acids, and trace minerals, copper, zinc, and iron. Clearly, it is best to buy organic, free range, grass fed liver as to avoid any stored toxic substances that the liver may harbor.

Unfortunately, pâté is not sold in any store around here. Trader Joe’s carries it on the winter season only. So, I made my own today!

Not a bad snack! Bring a notepad and pen because this meal is sure to have you hearing La Vie En Rose, smelling three different varieties of fresh ocean air, and falling in love with your taste buds all over again!

Original Drink Recipe: “Sex on the Boat”

This is an original drink recipe created by yours truly, The First Mate!
Sex on the Boat
Blend Together:
¾ Cherimoya flesh
2 cups ice
1 cup coconut milk
½ banana
¾ cup rum
Garnish with slice of orange, drizzle of dark rum, and umbrella

Makes 2 drinks.
The Cherimoya, also known as custard apple or sherbert fruit, is a large tropical fruit about the size of a grapefruit. It has juicy white flesh and large black seeds. It tastes like a combination of papaya, mango, pineapple, and vanilla. This cherimoya came in our CSA box!

Enjoy!

Losing Sight of the Shore: Mindfulness Exercises

I am totally consumed by the concept of living mindfully.  I buy everything on the subject: books, ipod meditations, local food from sustainable sources, even a sailboat!  I blog. Self-help is my favorite genre.  I try to live peacefully.  I try to be emotionally present.  I try to be an engaged listener.  I try to maintain my boundaries.  I try to do what I have been taught is good.  I try to do what is right. 

I know there is value in this way of living.  I know that these thoughts are worthy of my attention.  I cannot live otherwise, but today...I am exhausted.  I remember hearing an appropriate line from a movie:  “Too much thinking wears down your batteries.” Lois Lane to Clark Kent, in the original Superman.

At any rate, I would like to share a little of the sentence completion exercises from Taking Responsibility: Self-Reliance and the Accountable Life.  This book was phenomenal!  I highly recommend it.  The author has about 30 sets of these sentence completion prompts; here are a few.  Basically, you just finish the sentence with as many endings as come naturally to you.  Don't over-think it.  Just blurt or write out the answer.

If I pay more attention to my inner signals today—
If I am more truthful in my dealings with people today—
If I am 5% more self-accepting today—
If I am self-accepting even when I make mistakes—
If these ideas start working in my subconscious mind—

If I disown what I am thinking and feeling—
If I place other people’s thoughts above my own—
When I look at what I do to impress people—
If I face who I am to make myself “likeable”—
I am beginning to suspect—

Dock Gnome and other Dock Accoutrements

There has been lots of weather as you can tell from the Captain's posts.  Today was supposed to be calm.  The Captain got an invitation from Neighbor Wilson to go out on his 27' Catalina this morning and troll for salmon.  They went out for two hours, but nothing was biting.

The Captain inspected our sail and did not find a new nest.  I was a little sad to hear about that.  On the up side, I won't have to be cleaning baby birdie poop off of the sail.  At any rate, dock life is thriving.

I love the stuff that our dockmates put out for decoration!  I feel extra lucky to have a communal gnome!  I would have never thought to procure one of my own, but I am very happy to share in the collective luckiness!

Check out all the other gnome statues that I found!

Dock/Garden Gnome:

Function: noun
Etymology: French, from New Latin gnomus
Date: 1661
1 : an ageless and often deformed dwarf of folklore who lives in the earth and usually guards treasure
2 : an elemental being in the theory of Paracelsus that inhabits earth
— gnome•like \-ˌlīk\ adjective

— gnom•ish \ˈnō-mish\ adjective

I was thinking about getting a fake owl to stand guard over our boat when we are gone.  I think the plastic owl is supposed to discourage gulls and other birds from making homes on the boat.

I love the shiny triangle "used car lot" streamers!  I want some for our boat, but I don't know where to get them.  Seriously, if anyone knows where to get these, please let me know!!!

I am a sucker for shiny things....

Sailor Food, Eating LOCAL, and Carol Alt's Raw foodbook

I have been saving this one up. This is for the all the Foodies and the Foodie in me. I’ve been reading Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. If you don’t know this book, you’ve got to pick up a copy! Barbara Kingsolver is Michael Pollan expanded and enriched. The book is Sally Fallon’s dream! It is the fulfillment of the Slow Food Movement!

I buy it all, hook, line, and sinker!  We have been subscribing to a local farmer's food basket delivery service.  It is not technically a CSA, but it is basically the same concept.  So, we've been doing this for almost 2 years and it has been great!  I don't have to stress about getting to the market and we are eating everything local and in season.  It feels so healthy!!!

I love feeling more in tune with my surroundings, the land, growing things. . . and the composting!  Oh, the composting!  I am in heaven!  We are greener and brighter and cleaner!

And, I've been trying to go raw, and using Carol Alt's primer to get started.  My contention is this: how do I eat RAW and LOCAL?  Umbashi plums, coconuts, tarmari sauce, flax seeds . . . not local! And not in season!  It is much easier to eat local, but I can make some modifications. I’ve spent a lot more money just getting together a RAW kitchen. I can’t decide which is best.

Which brings me to the discussion of The Cans of Dinty Moore.  After reading Charles Dewell's account of 40 days at sea and losing 41 pounds, living on Dinty Moore. . .  Is this the reality of sailor sustenance?    Really?  Is that necessary?  I get the sea sickness. . . . but, all that MSG?  Really?  Do I have to?  Did they really have to drink grog to stave off the scurvy?

As for sailor food…

Me thinks that sprouted grains and beans are perfect for the boat. Eating in the Raw is possible!  What about dried hummus, dehydrated fruits, bottled kombucha, and live food bars?  Luckily, I can have this conversation in my head and it is all theoretical because we never intend to do any long ocean sails, so hopefully I will never be that far from a beloved farmer's market. 

The food is where it is at!  What do you think?

TGIF Sunset Cruise

TGIF!  We went on an open ocean sail after work today!  Captain's take: wind was 1-3 mph, 2-4 ft swell, 7 second intervals.  Basically, bobbing in the duldrums...

So, we headed back into the bay for some pictures in the "magic hour"!

Wondered about this boat from Las Vegas....???  Port of Call?  The Venetian?  Treasure Island?

Stopped in for Fish and Chips at the Local Hut!

I ordered a "Sex on the Beach".  Just so you know, this is out of my usual form--too much Red #5.  But, we are thinking that we have to come up with a drink called "Sex on the Boat".  The Captain says that it must stave off scurvy in order to be authentic. "Sex on the Beach" is Vodka based, but I wanted to come up with a Rum alternative.  But, isn't that a "Shipwreck"?  We don't want that!  Any suggestions?

TGIF Sunset BBQ

Thanks to the good Captain, we had planned to take the boat on the Bay for BBQ Filet Mignon, photography, and local Sauvignon Blanc!  I was so grateful to have this evening cruise on the schedule, because it has been a super long busy crazy week!  And, I've been reading The Motion of the Ocean!  This is Janna Cawrse Esarey's book fully entitled: The Motion of the Ocean: 1 Small Boat, 2 Average Lovers, and a Woman's Search for the Meaning of Wife.

So, I had planned to present the B-HAG concept to my Captain: Big Hairy Audacious Goal.  This is Janna and Graeme's grand concept, a'la stimulus package!  Basically, come up with a goal that is bigger than life, create a stategy for accomplishing it, and then throw caution to the wind and take a deep, cleansing breath, and go for it!!!!!!

If you have a big Goal . . . . would you dare even say it out loud? Would you share it with anyone? Would you keep it silent, secret and let it build momentum inside like a 2 Liter bottle of Pop shaken up? What do you think?

TGIF!  We had a wonderful sunset BBQ cruise!

Weekend Roundup

Over the weekend, I plowed through the rest of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See, because I couldn’t wait to read Elizabeth Gilbert’s eagerly anticipated sequel Committed. I was not disappointed!

I have to say that reading these two books so closely together makes an impact! The juxtaposition of the narrative voice of a submissive traditional Chinese female and the modern professional Westernized woman is quite remarkable. I cried while reading one and laughed out loud with the other.

To quote Gilbert (my hero) on the subject of the childless professional woman:

“Moreover, as I aged, I discovered that I loved my work as a writer more and more, and I didn’t want to give up even an hour of that communion. Like Jinny in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, I felt at times ‘a thousand capacities’ spring up in me, and I wanted to chase them all down and make every last one of them manifest. Decades ago, the novelist Katherine Mansfield wrote in one of her youthful diaries, ‘I want to work!’--and her emphasis, the hard-underlined passion of that yearning, still reaches across the decades and puts a crease in my heart. I, too, wanted to work. Uninterruptedly. Joyfully.”

What does this have to do with sailing? Absolutely nothing. Truman ran 17 miles this weekend. I ran 4. I flew to Denver for a Boston Scientific Cadaver Course on pelvic reconstruction products. I made a yummy bulgar-wild rice-cabbage-onion-herbes-de-provence-green pea salad to take to the Super Bowl Party. Packed in some dark beer. Did some No Meat Athlete Blog reading.

Absolutely fantastic! Uninterruptedly! Joyfully!
~Lauren

How to be a Good First Mate

Basically, every marriage book I've ever read has prepared me for taking on the task of becoming a First Mate. We have been married for 8 years, so I've read a lot of them! Now it is just time to follow all that good advice.

I feel like each time we take the boat out of the slip we are playing out some quotable vignette in which the Captain (husband) is supposed to manage the way-ward crew (wife and/or family) and subvert any possible attempted mutiny. This is not a compliment to my own behavior! I am usually the instigator of said mutiny attempts. Insubordination cannot be tolerated on such a small vessel!

Ha ha! All joking aside, the opportunity to become a better help-mate has rather clearly presented itself. I have taken to refinishing the galley. Truman has attended to the motor and sails. We make a good team actually. But, we are learning to steer, tack, navigate, anchor, etc.

There are several obstacles:

First of all, I have never taken a sailing class. I have never read a sailing book. I might be considered lazy.... the jury is still out on that one. But, Truman has the task of educating himself and then educating me at whatever level he feels appropriate. I am perfectly happy with this arrangement!

Let's see how it works out this year! Follow along with us!

~ Lauren, First Mate