Two Months In (North Beach, MD)

*Blink*

Two months have passed?!? December 1st feels like a biggie — winter has arrived! Snow’s in the forecast!

Brio II has been awesome. We’re still in the “getting to know you” phase of our courtship, but I think we’ve picked a solid partner. Granted our neighbors mostly tell us stories about how long she sat here and how many cigars were smoked on her, but hey every lover comes with a past, right? 😉

Toddler life on a Sabre 42 CB Sailboat

Neighbors helped us solve another mystery when they offhandedly commented, “the ducks are probably sad they can’t nest on her anymore.” Explains the copious amounts of feathers and a single perfect blue egg that I found in a cockpit cubby… You can’t make this stuff up, people.

Lazarette life on a Sabre 42 CB

A few weeks ago the wind-up clock that we’d assumed was dead suddenly chimed 2:00pm. We joked that it was like Brio II had accepted these fools weren’t going to leave her alone, so she might as well come back to life again. Scared the heck out of me when it chimed though!

The projects… well, they continue. A memory popped up on Facebook recently, reminding me of our honeymoon in the workyard when I proudly proclaimed “the boat projects will be done soon!”

Ha! I was off a little on that one 🙂

I keep a little calendar where I jot down the day’s wins… sometime they’re small, like “scrubbed all the purple bird poop off the decks in the rain” and sometimes they’re big, like, “finished running all the damn ducting for the damn Webasto” (which will be *amazing* when it’s done but holy heck if you’ve never tried to run 3-1/2″ ducting from stem to stern, you don’t know the fun you’re missing out on!!).

On particularly bad days, I note the lows too – “accomplished nothing because the manual bilge pump hose was actually full of diesel which we discovered by accident and have since spent all day cleaning up”.

Note to future self: check the manual bilge pump before you buy the boat.

Cumulatively, progress is being made. I know I’ve extolled the benefits of marginal improvements before, but it’s a mantra we cling to often. Even when you can’t see the instant results of your efforts, as long as you keep making teeny tiny improvements in the right direction, you’ll reach the day where you look around and think *damn* we’ve done a lot of work here!

Boat "progress" - nav station opened up on the Sabre 42 CB to do a little wiring work

This also applies to health (eat marginally better, move marginally more) and finances (invest a little more, spend a little less) and love (show a little more kindness, practice a little more patience). There you have it folks – Leah’s life advice in one paragraph 🙂

While we’re bragging, I need to mention my most proud achievement of late — teaching Zephyr to answer “what does Santa say?” with a very measured and adorable “ho ho ho”.

We also go to the “whee” on a daily basis (the slide), frequent the nearby beach looking for “ibby’s” (itsy-bitsy-spiders) and scan the sky for “amas” (airplanes). Watching a kid learn to talk is incredible.

We’ve celebrated two Zephyr-month-milestones (18 and 19!), had an entire Thanksgiving dinner onboard (including the smallest turkey I could find and two pumpkin pies), and made a few friends around the marina.

All in all, I’d say life on Brio II is unfolding exactly as Leah-of-the-past could (should??) have predicted… slowly, with lots of projects, lots of memories, and a few story-worthy-detours along the way.

And hey, maybe one of these days we’ll actually leave the dock! Maybe-possibly-pretty please?

– LMK

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