The Great White of Cape Cod

We do have some great white sharks here on the Cape, but I am talking about our windsurfing van. It is a white, high roof van, therefore titled the "Great White". Recently my mom mentioned that in such a big van, we should be able to sleep inside on a mattress during our longer trips. Since it is hard to explain and even harder to imagine our van stuffed full of windsurfing gear if you have never seen it, I decided to post some pictures to offer some insight. Here are a few of our fully packed van for one of our Hatteras trips:

View of our packed van from the back - pretty full, right?

And from the side - not sure where a mattress would find space...

So, as you can see, there is definitely no space for sleeping except on the front seat. But if you think about what we managed to put in there, Peter did a pretty good job of packing. In the pictures above we have 2 longboards on top of the van, and all of this inside: 9 boards, 6 booms, ~ 20 sails, ~10 masts, an inflatable boat, an inflatable kajak, a motor for the boat, a gas canister for the boat, 3 suitcases, 2 beach chairs, 3 big shopping bags full of wetsuits and booties (yes, those are mine!), 2 plastic boxes full of absolutely necessary windsurfing stuff, and lots of other small items like the pumps to inflate the boat, harnesses, fins, etc. - oh, and a ladder to get the boards on and off the roof of the van! And I probably forgot to mention lots of the things inside the van, but as everyone knows great whites are pretty big...