Adios winter.

It’s official: we have survived living aboard an entire Pacific Northwest winter and all her glory. It was dark, it was windy, it was wet, it was bone-chilling cold but we have lived to tell the tale! Today is the first day of spring and it marks the start of our last full season at the dock.

In all honesty, while we just about lost our marbles a number of times this past winter, it really wasn’t all that bad. Or maybe that’s just hindsight or the fact that the sun actually was shining when we woke up this morning and we are still feeling a little sundrunk. Of course, the clouds rolled in by 1100 but we so enjoyed the forgotten warmth the sun can bring. It’s been a while. Last night we even slept with the porthole above our bunk open and breathed deep the sweetly scented warmer night air drifting in above us.

Living aboard with kids, or just living with kids period, means that there is always plenty to do so boredom rarely set in. Cabin fever, yes, but there was rarely an empty hour this past winter. Of course, not all of it is of the mentally simulating variety (i.e. washing another sinkload of dishes, hauling laundry up the dock in the rain, scraping dried mac & cheese off the cabin floor) but the dark damp days just flew by and now here we are, welcoming spring.

Already the not-so-lovely memories of Winter are fading as they tend to do. The good ones will come along with us: the luscious sound of the rain pattering on Wondertime’s decks, bowling bits of ice across the frozen watertop, the pure silence of snow falling on the docks in the morning, 40 knot gusts of wind gripping the boat and straining her docklines, the oven warming the cabin with it’s smell of fresh cookies. Maybe it wasn’t a matter of surviving winter after all, but savoring it.