How did this happen?

Living aboard in Southeast Alaska is most sublime in the summer. The docks hum with all kinds of wonderful activity. The harbor I’m in has a mix of pleasure and work boats and some of those boats do double-duty as pleasure and work. There are a few liveaboards as well.

This amazing double rainbow arced all the way across the channel to the mountains (that you can’t see in the photo.) We get a lot of rainbows. This one was particularly spectacular. My photo is a pale, pale imitation of the very glorious reality. I actually got a phone call to ensure that I stuck my head out to see it! (We do that here – we call people to tell them the aurora borealis and rainbows and orcas are out.)

All summer, folks to and fro with carts full of supplies, families with rolling suitcases, and dogs along our docks. Always dogs around here. Charter operators haul down food from Costco for their clients (the ones with the rolling suitcases!). Commercial fishermen have Home Depot and Western Auto stuffed in their carts with hoses and pipes and line and buckets and lumber- all manner of interesting accoutrements. Sanders and grinders sound off as evidence of people giving their boats the repairs and maitenance needed.

And I missed this. Well, I was here until mid-July (not including a quick trip in June) so I did get to see that rainbow above. But July, August and September are some of the best times to be in Southeast! I still feel like I’m shaking off winter until about mid June. But, family obligations kept me South for a long time this year.  And I never did get to really shake off last winter and put on summer contrary to some of the photographic evidence from May and June!

Here are my two boys in May on a nearby lake. They got to try stand-up paddleboarding and also kayaking. They of course want a paddleboard and a kayak and, I, of course, AGREE with the desire!

And now, it’s November and I feel as though I didn’t get a summer but the temperature gauges are all in the 30s and the rain is cold and icy and it almost feels like snow, but not quite because it’s that time of year for the really miserable, soak-you-til-you-get-hypothermia rain. I feel a little lost.

I may have mentioned in another post that we homeschool. November means typically two solid months of school has happened. We’re more like 3 weeks. I feel so behind the 8-ball (where did that phrase even come from?? Oops, From whence cameth that phrase anyway? ((no ending with prepositions on this blog, no siree!)))

But here I am, in the dark a few days after the time change. My boys are still sleeping. We brought a dog back from our travels. My daughter lives down south now and we have her dog again. And I’m trying to assemble myself and my thoughts and grasp the reality that IS rather than the hope that isn’t.

This was the summer I was going to haul out, scrape the bottom, paint everything,  have a roof put on, add a tophouse.

When I purchased the boat, the roof wasn’t finished. It is raw plywood covered in a couple layers of plastic. It’s survived two winters with me. I thought that was probably pushing it enough.

But, it’s November.

And this isn’t the time to start roofing jobs.

Though my sweet friend says he’ll do it. I am skeptical of the wisdom of starting that project NOW. Especially if we find out there is plywood or other undergirdment that needs replacing. I cannot bear the thought of having my roof open to the elements. Nor can I bear thinking of just covering over a problem that will just need to be uncovered and fixed later

This summer DID see some positive changes and upgrades, however. I have a propane gas cookstove now rather than the Dickenson diesel stove. Two lovely young fisherman bought the Dickenson and supposedly put it on their gillnetter.

They were so adorable.

Earnest, hardworking young men in their early twenties. I get a little verklempt when meeting these kinds of people.

This is my dear friend who helps me with so much pulling that Dickenson out! He manhandled it out the door and literally bicep-curled it up into the cart to haul it to his truck! I get nervous when he does stuff like that. I depend on him to keep that body of his working and injury-free.

This is my pretty, shiny, brand new cookstove! See those four burners? You know what that means? That means someday I’ll be able to fry eggs and bacon. Seriously I am excited about that. The installation isn’t finished. I could use it right now, but it’s still a little jerry-rigged and ya know, I am just not going to go with jerry-rigged. I have enough of that in my life. So, I’ll wait until it’s properly installed. It’ll come. So yes, I’m still cooking in the toaster oven!

So yeah. November. I’m really struggling with it being November already.