18 months on . . .

Our lives have changed so much in the past year and a half. In the fall of 2010 we found jobs, hauled Mata'irea for the winter, moved to suburbs, and bought a car and giant television (because, well, it was winter, in New England, in the suburbs). We survived our first winter ashore (and the less said about that the better). Come spring we relaunched the boat and did a bit of summer cruising.

We visited anchorages in Narragansett Bay, and took vacation weeks to cruise out to Block Island and the Elisabeth Islands. In between, Mata'irea rode out her second tropical storm on her mooring in Newport Harbor. Finally, we hauled Mata'irea for the winter again, and made a winter cover for her. And we had a baby.

Should I have led with the baby?

Probably.


He is insanely cute.



Axel is three months old now. And I find myself forgetting the early days already. I bought a handmade baby book off of Etsy, expecting to document all of his firsts. But I'm not crafty. And my handwriting is atrocious. I'm afraid to mess up the beautiful pages. I'm much more comfortable with a keyboard with its backspace and delete buttons. And during the past year and a half I've missed recording our lives in this space.


Before all these sweet moments, and some of the not so sweet ones,

get lost in the fog of sleepless nights and diaper changes, I'm going to start capturing them here.

And just like that, a cruising blog becomes a baby blog. But I promise, there will still be plenty of talk of bilges and boat bits. And what would a sailing blog be without pictures of gorgeous sunsets at anchor?