I can fight fires, save lives, and put on a lifejacket.

I haven’t been around all week!


Wanna know why?


You’re looking at a brand-new STCW graduate! That means I’ve completed standardized basic safety training and can work on boats around the world. It also means that I jumped in a life raft in the pool, did some CPR on a dummy, and did full on real firefighter training. It was SO FUN!!! STCW is made up of four training modules: Personal Survival Techniques, Personal Safety & Social Responsibility, First Aid & CPR and Basic Firefighting. I still have the Megayacht Interior Operations course and Powerboat course to do and then I’m done! I haven’t actually been this excited about school in ages (and trust me, I know all about school…university degree then a college diploma then dive instructor training and now this… apparently I really like being a student?)


Here’s our life raft inflating:

Also my first attempt at getting my bunker gear on at the fire field…a little wonky, but it looked a lot better the second (and third and fourth and fifth) time…

I haven’t had that much fun in a long time. I LOVED firefighting!! I actually want to go back and do the advanced course if I have time. We used all the different kinds of extinguishers, went in teams through a smoke-filled building and put out a pallet fire, did a search & recovery of a victim in a blacked out room and finally went through a maze in the dark, full of slides, holes, trick corners and dead ends. Some people didn’t fare too well (overheating, panic attacks) but I rocked it and it was a really fun week.


I’m starting to get settled a bit in Ft. Lauderdale!


The house I’m staying in is slowly but surely coming together. I have been painting (and drinking Red Stripe, because painting with a beer is legit):

We have been making do with some less-than-ideal housing conditions while waiting for appliances, new floors, etc. Also my ‘landlord’ hasn’t brought anything from his storage unit yet so on top of that we have no pots & pans, furniture, etc.


Due to these factors, we have interesting movie nights:

matching twin air mattresses…movie night in my room! wine in red solo cups! boxes for a table! laptop for a tv! ghetto as hell!

We also have to get really creative because we have nothing in the house. No corkscrew for our $5 bottle of wine from Wal-Mart? Make one, bitches.

yep…this actually worked.

I’ve also been blazing around Ft. Lauderdale on my scooter from Yachty Rentals… meet SADIE! She’s 49 cc’s of pure beast. AKA mostly everyone honks at me everywhere I drive because I can’t coax her above 35 miles an hour. Sadie has to stay within city limits because we can’t make the minimum speed on the highways. That’s okay Sadie. I love you anyway.

And finally, I am still enjoying the endless summer that my life has become. I was getting a little stressed about what was happening – am I finishing my courses and getting a job on a yacht? Going back to Roatan to find another dive instructing job? Going somewhere else in the Caribbean to look for a dive job? Staying in south Florida to do god knows what? And then I thought about all that, and realized, holy shit – my options are all AMAZING!!!!!!!!

key biscayne beach day. my life doesn’t suck.