We haven’t run away nor changed our minds, and you’d know that if you’ve been following along on instagram (livethevoyage). We’re alive and well! It’s been hard to write or even think about sailing away when all you can think about is making it through another Maine winter. Speaking of “making it through”, for us, we’re just living the voyage winter-style and that means downhill skiing. Maine isn’t full of many “huge” mountains, but it is home to two fairly well-known ski mountains, Sunday River and Sugarloaf. Several well known Olympians have come from both mountains and we’re lucky to call Sunday River our “home” mountain where our children have grown up skiing.
Skiing is definitely our “get through winter” drug of choice. Between this season and last, we’ve ticked over 60+ ski days. Our 4 kiddos have all been skiing since they were 2.5-3.5 years old, and I can honestly say our girls are officially better skiers than their parents and Callum is almost there, too. And let me tell you, that is a tough pill to swallow. They love to ski. The kids will tell you a huge perk of homeschooling is the fact that snowstorms means chasing powder days. The kids ski it all – bumps, trees and steeps and drag us down every inch of it with gusto. There were days where we’d head out for first chair and go through to last chair, without a single break, not even a bathroom break. Hardcore I tell you. Had we decided not to sail, I am pretty sure our kids would be begging to join Gould Academy race/freestyle programs…. quick, buy that boat! 😉
This winter hasn’t been a winter to write home about. It started off with a decent amount of front end snow, then it got bitterly cold, like record setting too cold to ski kinda cold, super windy, then it rained and got warm, and then March has been full of powder days. I will be honest. I want the powder days in February, not March. By March, I am ready for sunshine, but living in New England, beggars can’t be choosers, so we enjoyed the powder. You get what you get, and you don’t get upset!
The last few weeks, we’ve been starting to think heavily about what is to come for our family. We’ve been renting our home out on Airbnb on the weekends while we ski in preparation for renting short term this summer for vacation rentals while we live aboard. It’s been a pretty decent experience and it’s pretty much paid for our winter ski habit. Overall, a win-win! Since our
home is almost 100% rented out for the late spring and summer, we will be ripping off the band-aid and starting to live aboard close to full time. This is going to be a huge change for us, but I think we’re ready. I think it will be nice to experience living aboard while staying put in our community with all the amenities we’re used to, minus a few things!
Our boat will splash back into the water on May 11th. Before then, we have a rather long laundry list of projects to complete before she splashes. Kevin is going to repaint the bottom for a new fresh coat of anti-fouling, which is an entirely different blog post for another day, ’cause you know, nothing comes easy with boats. We also are finally USCG documented, and that wasn’t easy either, ’cause you know, nothing ever comes easy when dealing with the government either. Kevin will be installing some thru-hulls for our soon to be installed watermaker and some transducers for our Raymarine system. I will be recovering our salon cushions and making new cockpit cushions. Oh, did I mention I am learning to sew as I figure that project out? Yeah. Stay tuned for that train wreck.
In the coming weeks our blog/facebook will become more active again, so be sure to follow along!