I keep thinking how to document an average Quest day. I wonder; would it go something like this?

Me standing above a mountainous pile of wet cozzies: ‘Why the *#%^ does no one else know how to hang out their wet stuff on this boat besides me?’

Or would it be something like this: Actually, we’re all sitting around Zen-like, doing yoga and enjoying the sunsets.

I wonder which version, dear reader, you might believe. Is it that obvious? Haha. Yep, we are that normal.

Things have changed a bit recently. For example Jack often used to be the last one to get up in the mornings, not needing to wake up for school – until we started diving. Now that we dive, dive, dive he is usually the first one up.

It’s not because he’s raring to go back in the water. Not first thing in the morning anyhow. It’s because it’s the best time to run the generator, bulk the house batteries and fill the dive cylinders.

It gets noisy on Quest with everything running. Since it’s early, we plug the kettle into the wall socket instead of boiling water on the gas stove. After the tea and coffee’s poured, the little yellow dive compressor goes on upstairs in the cockpit.

Each cylinder is filled with air, left to cool slightly and topped up again. The only time when Jack doesn’t fill the tanks is when it’s raining – not good for compressor – or if there’s a funny smell in the air.

We cant breathe in any funny smells on our dive – in case we pass out with potential airborne fumes. This means I have to remember things. Mental note: do not use the fly spray when the compressor is on. Oops. Damn flies.

Remember too, do not turn kettle on for highly desired second cup of coffee. Power overload and Quest’s generator will trip. Everything stops, including the dive compressor – which gives Jack a mini-heart attack every time. With his head in the cockpit lazarette, poor guy has a right to think the whole system has gone kaput. And boy, that would be a sad day. In fairness, I’ve only turned on the kettle twice when the compressor was still on. Twice in the past month. Double oops.

So that’s our morning routine. Except now, with this sudden summer vacation luxury, the girls are sleeping well past the 8am zone. Even though their cabins receive the most vibrating noise and must make both of them dream they’re in a machine’s innards.

We have no early morning classes at the moment. No waking people up. No bad moods, teenager grumps or parental queries. Like, ‘Why are you not taking notes when the teacher just told you to?’ Just a noisy boat and two months of school vacation.