Missing: The Crew of Zephyr

Well, not really...but in terms of blogging, yes. So...where have we been? Think that Johnny Cash song "I've Been Everywhere" 

"I've been everywhere, man.

I've been everywhere, man.

Crossed the desert's bare, man.

I've breathed the mountain air, man.

Of travel I've had my share, man.

I've been everywhere."

We've been to Boston, Eastie, Harwich, New Orleans, New Castle,Waterbury, Duxbury, Provincetown, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Scituate, Osterville, Katy, Baton Rouge, Bar Harbor DC,Warren, Westport, Woods Hole, Annapolis and...now...good 'ole Kit-ry Maine! Home! 

I'd love to say we'd sailed all those places,it would be quite incredible if we sailed to Katy, TX, but we did sail to a lot of them. This summer was full of change some good and welcome, some not so good. We enjoyed amazing times with family and friends and even had a 4th of July escape in our "Land Yacht" OJ to the Vermont mountains - thanks Hurricane Arthur. 

Our Land Yacht is a great backup plan when a Hurricane ruins 4th of July sailing plans

There is so much to write about like our great weekend sailing trip to Salem...

Or our sweet view of the Boston skyline from our summer slip in East Boston...

Or the many nights spent with a cockpit fulla friends, tunes on the stereo and laughs...

Or our eventful summer cruise to Scituate - Provincetown - Duxbury and beyond where we lost the dinghy in a blow and got towed TWICE! 

A very happy captain sailing his very own boat into Duxbury Bay

A TowBoat US membership is the best thing money can buy! The story of the two folks towing us is for another time.

Or our sail north to Portsmouth when we lost the dinghy - once and for all...

Zephyr's arrival into Little Harbor as seen from Sea-Celia, it's like the heavens were welcoming us back home

And I will write all about these different summer adventures especially since my view out my window right now is of a frozen tundra, complete with ice caking all trees and my cockpit full of an 1" of ice. I like to relive our happy summer times to help me get through the endless Maine winters. 

Basically, the take-away is that in mid-September we sailed back north to Portsmouth/Kittery and we couldn't be happier with our decision. Overall, Boston just was not our cuppa tea. The marina we chose wasn't ideal for living aboard. The constant and vicious wakes from all the boat traffic made for a VERY uncomfortable and constant roll while in our slip. Zephyr would take the waves and wakes on her starboard beam and then would continue to violently roll back and forth for 4-5 minutes The commuter ferry boats start around 5am and from 4-6pm it was also VERY rolly, then on the weekends, it was virtually impossible to be aboard comfortably without getting tossed around the boat getting bruised up. It's probably a great marina for those weekend warriors but for us liveaboards who cook aboard, shower aboard and sleep aboard day in and day out it's just not doable.  

Take a look at our neighbor's boat to get  a good idea of daily life

Add to that, that about 6 weeks into living in Boston, we also started getting very homesick for the lifestyle the Seacoast provides. We missed walking into town for dinner, we missed taking Toby to gorgeous Seapoint Beach on the Maine coast, we missed trees and trails and wild and natural spaces. We missed local foods, local beers, small markets, gastropubs, smoothie stores -- you know the yuppie stuff. Apparently, we're yuppies and we're just fine with that! We missed the simple, quiet, relaxing lifestyle that the Seacoast provides. I mean there's a reason there's a mass exodus from Boston every weekend in the summer to Portsmouth & Kittery- it's vacationland! The Seacoast is where we called home for 8 years and there is something quite wonderful about the people and the life we've built here. 

Once we thought of going into another winter aboard, we couldn't imagine not having the great community of friends (more like family) we made at Badgers Island Marina. That sealed the deal to head north (but really though - who winters in Maine!?) The decision to move home was not a hard one to make, even with the commute Tim now has. It came down to where did we want to be when we weren't working? Where did want to wake up on a Saturday morning? Who'd we want to surround ourselves with to survive another harsh, cold New England winter? 

Living on a boat isn't the easiest lifestyle choice and so it becomes really important that the world outside the boat is comfortable, easy and relaxing. If we'd cast of our lines for points far south and were leaving on our cruising adventure I think it would've been a different tale but because we're still tethered to land for work, family commitments, life, we just simply wanted to be 'home'.  Until we are cruising full-time and have the ability to sail onto a new port whenever we want, it's vital that we like the port we're in. It's no different than picking the neighborhood where you're going to buy a house. 

And really...Let's face it the Farrells are just not city folks! 

So we're the prodigal Seacoasters whom have returned. The summer away gave us great clarity in what it is we want in the next steps of our life and it helped to solidify for us where we're meant to be. It helped to clear our vision so we could reimagine what the next phase might look like and gave us a chance to really take an honest look at our feelings, hold them out in front of ourselves and explore them, own them. It gives us a chance to slow down, take a deep, long breath and realize - we've got it real good. It's time to soak it all in rather than just keep planning and dreaming away today. So that's what we're doing soaking it all in, feeling very grateful we have a lifestyle that allows us to try on new things and return if they don't fit, grateful we have family and friends who support all our choices and grateful we have eachother. 

Stay tuned...until then, if you need us we'll be living inside a bubble in the mighty, freezing waters of the Piscataqua! 

Today 12/8/14 - THE BUBBLE ERECTUS! 

The Usual Chaos of Living Well...

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.

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...

We found enough sun to visit Seapoint Beach in Maine, Carrie's never been to Maine!

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! 

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! 

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...

But OJ rallied through and we made it just fine to our wonderful little patch of forest in Portsmouth, RI. Getting ready for a formal wedding out of the back of a VW bus at a campground is so much fun because of the sheer irony! 

We clean up pretty good! 

The wedding was GORGEOUS! In a mansion on the shore of Narragansett Bay. It brought back fond memories of our fantastic week sailing those waters last summer and elicited more planning and scheming for future trips! The celebration was so full of happiness and love CONGRATS KATE & ANDREW! 

The dudes on the grounds of the mansion 

 

Kate was a GORGEOUS bride - why she chose to include us 2 jamokes - not sure! :) 

The "Tim and Funny Portraits" series continues...

A flashback to another time at the Glen Manor House 

Gorgeous tablescapes with a fantastic backdrop

The adventure home in OJ had an additional two passengers/friends who ended up camping with us the night prior - I think they just wanted to experience the awesomeness that is rolling in OJ. 

Danielle, Matt & Toby Post-wedding snoozing in the back of the bus - Toby was all partied out!

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! 

Music & Morgans

So it's been a while, things have been a little stalled out around here due to work - always gets in the way of plans to sail away, but it won't for long! But there's always stuff to report when you're hunting for your future floating home and restoring a 1975 VW. 

This past weekend the bus took center stage in Downtown Portsmouth on a GLORIOUS Saturday afternoon as we celebrated our good friends Liz and Dale who are moving from Portsmouth to Houston. We arrived in the bus with a cooler fulla jello shots, a corn hole/bean bag toss set and sleeping bags (just in case we imbibed a bit too much). We were able to get the bus a primo parking spot right in front of Liz & Dale's house. 

Of course we had to pop the top! 

Now a while ago there was a "snafu" with the bus' stereo deck, as in, Tim pilfered it while she was dead to put into his Corolla and then sold the Corolla with the deck still in it! So we got another system from a friend and for whatever reason (i.e. Tim's installation) it NEVER worked right. We would get the mysteriously frustrating message "Mecha Error" every time we put any CD in and forget the radio reception - never worked. Thing is the bus is pimped out with a pretty sweet speaker set-up. We actually got a few extra dollars in the loan we got to buy her so we could pimp her out with a sub-woofer (SHH! Don't tell our bank!). When she's working right, she BUMPS! But she hasn't been at her full capacity for a few years now, we rely on each other's riveting conversations, Timbo's singing, his "snare drum" playing and once in a while a $20 boombox we bought from Walmart. However, there is this strange and in certain circumstances (almost all) tremendous thing about the dysfunctional stereo - it only plays the CD "Pass the Peas" by the JB's. 

I mean SUPER funky stuff from James Brown's backing band from the 1960's?  YES PLEASE! Especially for bean bag toss, beer drinking and hanging on the sidewalk of Downtown Portsmouth on a sunny Saturday afternoon. 

More than we'll miss Liz & Dale, we'll miss these wings! :) 

Dale is a MASTER griller, no, not that sissy gas crap, Dale uses charcoal and yes, the man from Baton Rouge grilled YEAR ROUND in New Hampshire. You could smell Dale's famous wings from blocks away in February. The bus' awesome little side cocktail table made a perfect spot for us to put the wings while we played corn hole. We had numerous passer-by's who wanted to see the bus, toss a bean bag, have a wing and one dude even took a tour of the bus because he was looking for "alternative housing". The bus was in her glory, bumping funk music, being admired and serving as the scene for a really, really good time. More camping plans were hatched for a couple of weeks from now and music festival season is back! 

After that fantastic afternoon we decided it was time to buy the bus a new stereo. So Sunday afternoon we ventured to Best Buy to get the girl a new stereo deck. It has all the bells the whistles - USB connection, AUX input, Pandora, lights up 4 different crazy shades but best of all it plays the JB's CD plus the Willie Nelson and the Toots and even The Band.   This weekend we're taking her to Cape Cod for Memorial Weekend and Toby and I really looking forward to not having Timbo sing the entire way down Route 3! 

And...the boat search continues! 
We are planning to check out a 1982 41' Morgan Out-Island 416 while on the Cape. We are VERY, VERY, VERY excited about this boat and have been waiting since mid-March when we found it on Yacht World to see it. The marina where she's moored wasn't operational until Memorial Day and we need to get the launch to shuttle us out to her. From the listing (we have to take that with a grain a salt) she has a lot of what we're looking for - center cockpit, substantial rigging, solid craftsmen ship, wide beam. She also "looks" like she's been very well maintained. 

We have another story about our first Morgan Out-Island experience that we'll share next week when we have this boat's debrief. 

STAY TUNED! CAPE COD HERE WE COME! 
(did I mention we were excited?!) 

How pretty are her lines?!