Livin’ la Vida Lubber

It’s now spring – almost all the trees have their leaves, and the flowers are all in bloom – we’ve officially survived our first winter ashore in three years, and almost seven months on land. I was worried I’d hate it, worried that my seasonal depression would take hold. I didn’t anticipate enjoying experiencing four seasons again quite so much – believe it or not, it was nice to get to see some snow, and even though it’s been a wet, rainy spring, we’re loving seeing everything come back to life.

Portsmouth, NH is a great little town, and it didn’t take long for it to become home. We’re close to beaches, restaurants (including three amazing bakeries), marine supply and hardware stores, plus all the cute shops in the heart of Portsmouth. There’s a great independent grocery store, McKinnon’s, just down the street with an amazing meat/seafood department. We’ve instituted an almost weekly “cupcake emergency,” at A Southern Girl Bakery, which is just across the street from our apartment, and the mother/daughter duo who owns the bakery are just as sweet as the amazing confections they make.

We’re also close to a lot of hiking throughout New Hampshire and Maine. Nearby, we have the Urban Forestry Center and Odiorne Point State Park, and these have become our go-to morning walks. Farther afield, we have near-limitless options for beach, marsh, forest and mountain hikes.

We’re also close to family, which has been awesome – we’re only a 2 hour-ish drive from the Cape, and Chris’s brother lives less than an hour away. One of the hardest things about cruising life is that we don’t get to spend much time with our families and haven’t gotten to celebrate the holidays with them in years, so spending the holidays with our families was really special. We’ve been able to spend time with our nieces and nephews, and we’ve had a lot of fun getting to know them better. Since we’re relatively close, we’ve gotten to have our families up for dinners and brunches. We love to cook, so it’s been fun making meals for everyone in our own space.

I loved getting to have a real Christmas tree again, and it was fun to break out all our decorations.

I’m a total bird nerd, so I was excited that we’re allowed to have bird feeders. It took a couple tries to figure out the right feeder and right seed for the birds who overwinter here, but I was rewarded with a regular crew of chickadees, tufted titmice, dark eyed juncos, a downy woodpecker, Carolina wrens, and nuthatches, and occasional visits from cardinals, bluebirds, and goldfinches. Now that it’s spring, I’ve got a bunch of different kinds of sparrows in addition to most of my winter regulars, and the goldfinches, house finches and the cardinals (both male and female) have become regular visitors too.

We’ve kept ourselves busy learning new skills, learning French (I was pretty conversational in college, but I didn’t use it for years and now je parle comme j’ai cinq ans), going to a concert or two, getting to know the local restaurant scene, and learning how maple syrup is made at Kimstead Farm during NH’s maple sugar weekend. I’ve been teaching myself to paint and enjoying the journey, even though many of my paintings are still “beginner clumsy.”

For Chris’s birthday, I took him to a Bruins game, and we spent a fun day exploring Boston. And this spring, Chris finally got to his first Red Sox game at Fenway (despite having grown up on Cape) – unfortunately we didn’t get a win, but we did get a gorgeous day and had a great time!

We weren’t entirely stuck on land – we did get to help friends bring their catamaran around Hatteras in December (successful/uneventful Hatteras rounding #6 for us), and a few weeks ago, we went to visit the same friends in Baltimore. The weather didn’t cooperate for a sail, but we had a great time and enjoyed the chance to just float again.

On the way back from our delivery from Hampton, VA to Beaufort, NC, we made a little vacation of it, stopping in DC, making a pit stop in Havre de Grace to visit the decoy museum (we’d joked about it for years as we sailed by… but it was actually pretty cool!) and spending a night catching up with friends in New Jersey.

Land life has been a great chance to get rid of a TON of stuff that we had in storage since we moved out our White Plains co-op. It’s really hard to let go of all the stuff you accumulate over a lifetime, but there’s so much of it that just doesn’t make sense to keep. We’re going to need to do another big round of tossing/selling/otherwise divesting ourselves of stuff once we move back aboard, but we’ve at least made good progress. We also weeded through some of the boat stuff – from linens to spare lines to more fasteners than anyone could ever possibly use (most of which weren’t even marine grade), and we intend to do more of that as we start to migrate things from the apartment and storage unit that we got for the majority of our boat stuff up in Searsport.

Have we had some FOMO? You bet we have! We heard from several of our cruising friends while they were in the Bahamas and enjoyed living vicariously through their social media posts, but it really made us miss being there. But we’re currently filled with that pre-season anticipation we used to feel every year as our first sail gets closer and closer.

Windara launched earlier this week, and we’re so excited to get up and spend some time aboard this weekend. She’s still being commissioned, but we’re looking forward to doing some projects and starting to get her organized. I’m really looking forward to being able to take our time and move back aboard gradually so that we can finally get Windara set up the way we want her, and I can’t wait to see what this season brings!