Somehow we'd imagined our life aboard as being entirely different from land life, and though things are different, from the daily chores to the sounds and smells, life is still life. There's still a lot of life that goes on whether we're floating or still. That means life commitments, job commitments, house/boat guests, life events to celebrate...overall, time spent off the boat living life. One of our favorite quotes to describe our lifestyle is by poet Robert Lowell, "The usual chaos of living well." And living well is exactly what we've been doing these past couple weeks.
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| Carrie from Texas comes to stay aboard in torrential rains! |
We haven't gotten as much time sailing as we'd like, no thanks to the torrential rains & 40 degree temps of Memorial Day weekend, we have been having a wonderful start to the summer. Full of laughs, visits and celebrations with old friends, happy hours with new friends, special times with family and adventures in OJ, the orange bus. If we can't be adventuring in our sailboat we can at least adventure in our other love, the VDub! There's just something about slow rolling around New England in a VW bus...
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| We found enough sun to visit Seapoint Beach in Maine, Carrie's never been to Maine! |
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| Jill, Meggie & TK, also known as the 3 Musketeers at Notre Dame Academy |
Meggie and Seth got married in Scituate on Memorial Day weekend. Fantastic catching up with Jill's old friends from high school & celebrating a wonderful couple!
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| Wouldn't be Jill & Tim without some funny photo-ops |
Memorial Day Monday was spent 'straight chilling' on the bow. The sun was shining, the breezes blowing and we just laid about the boat doing nothing, answering to no one, enjoying the sweet life of living aboard.We hit some golf balls at the range, had some late afternoon beers at The Green Bean with some boat neighbors and took a long walk with Toby at sunset. Perfect kick-off to summer!
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| Our neighborhood sure is glorious in the waning light of day... |
Following the cold and rainy Memorial Day, in classic New England style, the temps rose 50* in less than a week and ushered in HOT and HUMID weather! It was pushing 95 on Friday! Lo and behold we discovered that Zephyr has a working A/C system - WHAT?! So we may not have had central heat all winter but we'll take central A/C! We took a fantastic dip in the Wentworth pool and sipped on frozen pina coladas Friday afternoon before hosting some new boat neighbors and friends for happy hour.
The heat arrived just in time for a trip to Newport/Portsmouth, Rhode Island to celebrate Kate and Andrew's wedding. Tim grew up with Kate and her brother Tom was Tim's best man at our wedding. Rather than spend tons of money on a hotel we chose to get a campsite and park the bus for the night. The adventure to Rhode Island was a bit worrisome, you see, an air cooled bus + 95* heat + Boston traffic can make one very nervous...
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| Danielle, Matt & Toby Post-wedding snoozing in the back of the bus - Toby was all partied out! |
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| Deluca and Timbo bus posing in East Boston - thanks for riding along Del! |
So though we might not be getting as much sailing in as we'd thought we would we have been soaking up this special time with family and friends. In the not so distant future we'll be off cruising in the Caribbean and we won't have the opportunity to rejoice in all these special moments and celebrations and I know we'll be sad to miss them. So from now until we cast off the lines for good we'll be playing the balancing act that is life and loving every second of it, in other words, living very, very well!
