Winter is O-V-E-R

So winter is finally over an I’m happy to report that we survived. Barely.

It was a lot harder than we expected in most ways, but surprisingly easier in others. Overall, this was the worst winter in, like, 20 years for most of the East Coast. That whole Polar Vortex thing was certainly unexpected and has made the past month especially hard with its gusting winds and frigid temperatures. Talk about an initiation! If the Scouts had a ‘Living on a Sailboat During the Worst Winter in Decades” badge , then we definitely would be rocking one on our winter jackets right now.

See, look how we’re celebrating Spring already. By breaking out our flip flops and frolicking on the beach and tearing off the shrink wrap that has been blocking our beautiful view of the sunsets for far too long.

Let’s not kid – it was windy and in the upper 30’s on that beach, and our toes were numb, but it didn’t even matter.

We also took down the plastic cave we’ve been living in for the past five months. The wind actually did it for us a few nights ago when it was gusting to nearly 40mph, and blew out the starboard side door. Yeah… try experiencing that in a boat. The only thing that made us feel a little better that night was watching our neighbors in their 40? monohulls getting tossed around like float toys.

Our neighbor called Matt at work the other day to tell him that the wind was basically blowing our shrink wrap off the boat. Gotta love those strong Northerly winds.

By the end of the day, our boat looked pretty scrappy. And because we’ll never let ourselves become “those” live aboards (oh cm’on… we all know the stereotype), we decided it was time to officially shed the skin.

We also shed another thing that was pretty symbolic.  The boat’s old name.  Not that we weren’t digging the ‘Grateful Attitudes’, but we felt we needed a rebranding of sorts. We’ll save the new name for another post so you can appreciate the suspense.

We went to an auction last weekend to benefit our niece & nephew’s school.  They had a lot of really great prizes that were up for grabs, but guess what we ended up walking away with?  A Weber BBQ grill and a beach cruiser bike.  Can you tell that Spring is on our minds?

Funny thing about that bike. Turns out Matt and I were bidding against each other in a live auction for that thing. I was down in front of the room during the live auctions and he couldn’t see me from his table in the back. I guess he didn’t think I was getting in on the bidding action and threw his sheet up at the lat minute. He ended up outbidding ME by $25 and winning the bike. I had no clue until I walked back feeling all deflated only to see his grinning face. Seriously Love this man.

So that’s about it. We’re standing on Spring’s doorstep just waiting to walk in!