It's July in Roatan, which means it's squall season. Yay? In addition to getting some new, thicker dock lines, we've been busy doing what we do best, sailing, SCUBA diving, snorkeling, and working our butts off.
Sailing's great, we've been getting some great reviews up on TripAdvisor from our satisfied guests, but the weather doesn't always comply and people sometimes cancel at the last minute due to a variety of reasons, so we've got to stay nimble, agile, able to tack at a moment's notice, shift gears and do something else with our time.
Down here, everyone has multiple hustles, even people who are ostensibly retired. Andrea is doing an amazing job with her Rodan & Fields work, helping to bring a little more beauty into the world one satisfied customer at a time. She's also able to draw on her incredible, diverse twenty-year experience as a nurse to do some consulting for those in need.
I'm doing some feature article writing for Roatan's Premiere Lifestyle Magazine - PAYA Magazine. I did a story on the Czech Village in the last issue and have written an exploration of coral restoration programs on Roatan for the next issue. It's really amazing to be working with the passionate team of journalists over at PAYA.
I'm also doing some freelance blogging for Copypress drawing on my years of digital marketing experience. It feels a bit strange sometimes to be writing about digital content marketing on my laptop watching the sunset from the cockpit, but it feels good to get paid for putting stories together.
I've also been doing a bit of routine boat maintenance work -- changing the propeller zinc, cleaning barnacles and other clinging marine life off the bottom of the boat. Don't even ask me about some of the stuff I scraped off the bottom of the keel.
It means I also get to work on my breath holding skills since we still don't have tanks (or a compressor) onboard City Dogs yet. Of course, I don't get paid for any of that work but at least we don't have to pay someone else to do it for us!
And having just completed our PADI Instructor Development Course (IDC) we're both available and working as freelance instructors for dive shops for DSDS, open-water students, or any level of dive certification.
It's tough work, but someone's gotta do it...