This past year has been a difficult one and the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the day-to-day routine for many of us. With the vaccine finally making its appearance this month, here’s to hoping 2021 will somehow eventually get back to “normal”.  This blog has gone dark since my last post in May about our 8 year anniversary living aboard mostly because there has been no real news to report. We did get off the dock quite a bit in March and April when the pandemic started but as temperatures got hotter, we stayed at the dock more often to run the A/C. As you know, summers here are miserably hot and all one can do while living on a boat is hunker down and try to stay cool inside the cabin.

So, what have we been up to? If you follow us on Facebook or Instagram you know that we spent most of June in Jacksonville, FL for Randy’s work. At the end of August/early September we spent a couple of weeks in Tennessee near the Smokey Mountains to get away from the heat and do some hiking. Other than that, it’s just been working from home (which we both did anyway) and keeping to ourselves. Even when restaurants reopened, we’ve managed to stay away from them and have cooked most of our meals at home. Like many, we’ve just tried to be smart about not being in crowds as much as possible which can be difficult at times in a popular marina. One nice thing about living aboard in a marina is that we can still converse with neighbors from a safe distance and feel somewhat “social” by sitting out back and listening to live music from the restaurant while we grill out.

Over the summer, we also managed to get a few boat projects done. And by “we” I mean Randy. Several years ago, we painted the exterior of Blue Turtle but we never finished. Randy finished up by painting the bridge which looks amazing now. He also installed a new heat exchanger on the Perkins, installed a new inverter (that was fun! lol), repainted our fridge and completely rehabbed our mast which had some wood rot. He and Corey also started rehabbing our starboard side rail which has some wood rot. We’ll be replacing a good portion of the lower rail with new wood which will be shaped by a carpenter we hired.

Overall, 2020 wasn’t so bad for us. We count ourselves to be lucky to be in good health and have our jobs be unaffected. With Randy not traveling as much for work and Corey now driving himself he’s had extra time for boat projects. We’ve eaten healthier than ever with making almost all meals at home versus eating out. While 2020 was pretty good to us, we are ready to wish her farewell. We are hoping for a healthier and vaccinated planet in 2021 and wish everyone the best!