Top 10 Tuesdays: Top Ten Reasons We LOVE Guests

Scott's lovely mom, Sue, sunning herself on the deck of Rasmus at Union Island.

Having guests aboard can be tricky when you live on a small boat...

Lucky for us, we have a great little aft cabin which makes having guests a breeze and we have been blessed with some pretty fantastic and adaptable guests who make having them oh-so easy.  Our experiences with guests aboard Rasmus have been nothing short of positive and here are the reasons we love having them:

Top 10 Reasons We Love Having Guests

1. They force us out of our routine.  I'm not going to lie, even living on a boat in the Caribbean can get a little...monotonous from time to time.  Having guests forces us to get up off our butts and explore the places we haven't, do the activities we've been putting off and just get out there and enjoy this beautiful place a little bit more.  It's wonderful.
2. We get to see the world through their eyes.  I love seeing what our guests take note of; the sound of the tree frogs at night, the sorry state of the street dogs, the deliciousness of the local cuisine, the beauty of the landscape, the color of the water, how fun it can be to do laundry by hand...our guests see our life with fresh eyes and it's always interesting to see what they pick up on, because often it's things that we take for granted or overlook.
3. It's a great excuse to tidy up.  Not that I need an excuse to be tidy (as you all know by now, I'm slightly OCD about it), but having guests always forces us to do some real get-down-and-dirty cleaning.  Re-organizing lockers, making more space, a good deck scrub and general tidying up is always on the agenda when we have a visitor and our boat is always better for it.
4. It's a great excuse to finish all those unfinished projects.  Replacing fans, changing out light bulbs, fixing that spinnaker halyard...all these little projects that aren't that big of a deal add up.  When we have guests - they tend to light a little fire under our butts and we just get stuff done.  It feels great!
5. It's an exercise in appreciation.  Like I mentioned earlier, our guests see things with fresh eyes and are almost always coming from a very different perspective.  Living on a boat has become the 'norm' to us and to see how our guests marvel at how we live makes us take a little step back and say, "You know what, we do live a pretty cool life!".  Not that we ever really forget that!
6. They love to help.  It's wonderful to have another set of arms to help out in the galley or on deck.  Scott's mom, the consumate helper-outer, was always ready to chop garlic and onions for me, always ready to dry the dishes or clean up.  It was wonderful.  While we do have a little routine and do things pretty specifically, it sure is nice to have a helping hand from time to time!
7. They spoil us a little.  It's true, they do.  My mom, Scott's mom and my brother took us out for meals and treated us to lunches and drinks on more than one occasion.  It's so kind and generous of them and even makes us feel a little like we're on vacation!
8. It offers more variety.  While Scott and I love each other a lot and obviously enjoy spending a LOT of time together (try 24 hours a day!), it's nice to have another person or two in the mix to change things up a little.  Conversation is always different and interesting and we enjoy the change in dynamic.
9. We get to play "tour guide".  If there is anything I've learned this past few weeks of having guests it's that a) there is a lot to do in Grenada and b) I'm not such a bad tour guide!  It's so fun to take our guests around and show them this place we call home.  At first I thought filling their days would be a challenge but in reality, there was no way to fit everything in for each of them! 
10. We get to share our lives with the ones we love and it feels so good when they "get it".  We are a couple of the lucky ones in that our families are not only supportive of what we are doing, but they get genuinely excited about it.  All of our guests loved the time they spent out here with us and were completely taken by the cruising life.  Each one of them left "getting it" and that just feels good.

Love, 

Brittany & Scott

PS.  Want to enjoy all the recent pictures of our guests' visits?  Check out our new albums on Facebook!