Catching Up
31 March 2009 | Still in Maine
Vicky / Finally thawing

Well it has been a long time since I posted, but as this is a sailing blog and we are not sailing I felt I didn't really have much to write about. But a lot has happened since my last post in September, so here goes....
Obviously Tom did finally get here, basically being driven off Osprey by the cold. If it had stayed warm I think Tom would have been happy to camp out all winter. We made it to Connecticut for Thanksgiving and had a wonderful time with Mike, Nancy and family. Next up was Christmas and I was able to finesse a week off work and we both traveled to England a spent the holidays with my family. We had a wonderful time, the entire clan assembled at my parents' home and it was one of the best Christmases we can remember. Then back to a very cold and snowy Maine for the New Year. I have really enjoyed my work here (more on that later) and Tom studied hard and took the exam for the US Coast Guard Captain License. I am proud to say he passed with flying colours - see previous post. We have joined the local gym and have been going almost every day - so are much fitter than we were and a tiny bit thinner too. We have been enjoying the local community and the local food. We can buy wonderful grass fed beef at the local farmer's market which is a year round affair. We also get free range eggs, local honey, locally roasted coffee - all very good. Every weekend a small van drives into town and sells fresh Maine seafood out the back - the most delicious shrimp we have tasted since South Carolina, $1 for 1lb - brilliant! Not quite so brilliant is the fact that they are so fresh they are still wiggling when we get them home. We have also enjoyed a few fantastic ski days right on our doorstep - Sugarloaf is only a quick hours drive away and Wednesdays are "Maine Days" where the lift tickets are $28 for Maine residents. We can just about scrape together enough ID to prove we are indeed living in Maine.
But now the snow is melting and our thoughts are turning back to Osprey all wrapped up in Rhode Island. We drove down to Norton's this weekend and found our baby safely wrapped and dry. It was nice to crawl aboard under the wraps and find everything as we left it. Tom will be coming back to the boat as soon as it gets a little warmer and start the preps for the new engine. My plans have changed somewhat over the course of the winter. I feel I have found a niche here in this small rural community and the hospital really needs another surgeon. I have agreed to continue here for some of the summer months which will certainly help our bank balance and cushion some of the blow from the ongoing financial crisis. After a lot of agonizing we have agreed to continue to follow our dreams at least for another year and head south again next fall. We want to see more of the Bahamas and will hopefully make it to the Exumas this time. After that, in all likelihood, we will return here and follow a land based life for a few years to try and rebuild our retirement funds. We plan on keeping Osprey in Penobscot Bay, Maine, so we look forward to some wonderful summer cruising up here. Maine does have some of the best cruising grounds on the East Coast.
As always our plans are written in the sand and will change with the tides. But, we do like to have a loose general idea of what we will be doing for at least the next year.
So that's it for now. As things start to ramp up for launch, I will try and keep up to date.