Posted from Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
So it’s been a while since I’ve posted. Primarily because I haven’t had much to talk about for the last little while (a bit hard to believe I know). So let me do a quick recap for what’s gone on.
Winter aboard a boat can be a lot of fun despite the cold. But in general it’s the time of the year that you hunker down inside your boat and wait for Spring really. There’s a few reasons for this but for construction to really take place you do end up making a bit of a mess. Since your space is limited it gets tricky to do that and not lose your mind on how dirty the place just got from a days worth of working. Still I got some electrical done (I’ll be doing a bigger post about that later once I’m done the last part of it for the 110 volt panel).
Mostly it’s been rather rough for me personally since the weather tends to play havoc with my head as it does with most of my family (Migraines run in the family and big weather changes are a trigger. FUN STUFF RIGHT?). Jeannie has also been busy with her pharmacy stuff as well so for the most part I was trying to keep things going on the boat. So helping with the laundry, doing more cooking than normal (Slow cookers FTW), and generally keeping the place clean and tidy. Our cats came back to the boat after the fun with the Webasto as well. They quickly adapted again to life bouncing around in the spring thaw.
One weird thing that has happened though was that this year we spent the big bucks and bought 2 new electric heaters. Dyson ones…. For $450 each. Sounds like a huge investment right? Well factor this in. Despite it being a colder winter with a lot of ice. And taking into consideration that we simplified things internally a bit, and added some more insulation we burned 200 gallons LESS fuel than we did the previous year. In total that’s roughly $1500 in fuel that we saved, minus the 2 Dyson’s we bought means we saved $600 this year alone. I HIGHLY recommend getting these if you plan to live aboard.
We’ve moved back to the island as well which went well. The wind was with us. I had Mitch helping us move and showing me some tricks regarding my ship (He’s got more experience steering various ships than I do so he’s really been helping me learn how to leverage things like prop walk etc).
If I go a bit quiet on this site once in a while it’s either because I’m super busy, just not in the mood to write, or one thing that is increasingly becoming evident is that although our life on a boat may seem odd to many people it has become more or less the norm for us. Like ya. For winter I had to go on out and chip the ice away with a fire axe… not something you do with a house… but it is something you do with a boat. People who live on the hard have neighbors… I do for only 6 months at a shot before I get new ones so I don’t have to worry about really growing resentment. You drive or take the bus to work… I take a boat during summer and walk during winter. So ya. While different to you… it is normal to us. Side note this isn’t a fair well post… Just a “egad I’ve been busy” post. I will continue to write and stuff. Better yet I hope to actually try my hand at making videos for this blog. There’s a post I want to do about personality types in a marina which I feel would be better as a video instead of a wall of text… like this. oops.