Provisioning

Today is the 8th of May and Captain and I are in the thick of preparing ourselves for our biggest summer yet.  We have carved out nearly 14 weeks to live aboard this summer starting May 21st.  Ciara won't be in the water probably until the 21st and 22nd so we will be spending the first week or so getting her all settled and to her new marina in Cedar River, Michigan.  For now though, the spreadsheet I abandoned in the fall has been cleaned up and made more spectacular then ever! There is so much work that goes into boating. Much like camping, or having to pile in a minivan with a family of 5....but when planning out nearly 3 months of food and supplies, the work started this winter.  Captain has been been camping in the winter while doing work in the middle of the week on board Ciara. She has a fresh bottom paint, deck paint and varnish. We went up last week and I did a full detail inventory of everything I needed to check on. We really only need to get the Mast varnished and finish the wood that is here at home (boom, hatches, stairs, wheel, etc).  We freeze dried over 180 meals this winter. Everything from my cheese potato soup for dinner to cooked breakfast sausage waiting for many wonderful breakfast burritos at anchor. We feel pretty confident that our food stores will treat us well and have eliminated the need for us to be so dependent on what little freezer/fridge space we have. Our basement movie room is now a pantry full of three months supplies that we will use to restock at our turnover days.

Living on the boat has really taught us how much joy there is in less.  Learning to live off less and less electricity, less waste has been incredibly freeing.  We are both feeling the stress of the world really hard these days and the prep stage of sailing is anything but relaxing.  With our set sail date less then two weeks away we know all the hard work will pay off again and we are hopeful for a safe sailing season.

So what does sailing season 2025 look like?  One thing we really took away from summer 2024 is how much we really enjoyed not having a hard schedule. The freedom of time was a major stress relief and led to unlock new joys of sailing.  They say a schedule is a sailors worst plan and to go with the wind, so that is what we are going to do.  There are, however, rough plans!  The first month Captain and I plan on really enjoying the waters of Door County.  Having those be our home waters for the last eight years we feel we hardly know them.  As most of the time we had a quick weekend up there, and if we had more then a weekend we headed to Michigan.  So we are going to explore Washington Island, other cities further up Door Peninsula, Chambers Island, Big Bay de Noc and whatever gem of an anchorage we can find.  Play with Kona. Read. Write. Play Music and find quietness. I really hope I get some good Aurora Borealis sightings.  It will be interesting as a month just the two of us will be a first.  We have about two weeks late June/early July where kids have some camps and logistics that will have us coming back to Madison a few times and then once camps are done the three littles will join us for a month. Hopefully getting back to the North Channel as they overwhelmingly voted to go back there. They really enjoyed all the rock scrambling and the people.  Then the kids come home for August again while Captain and I have a little over three weeks to return Ciara to her home port, whichever way the winds take us.  There are open invitations for people to join us this summer, so we will see whose stars align. We look forward to seeing old friends and new and dream of this summers adventures