Boats and Winter Do Not Mix

Our Big Floating Refrigerator

The kids think it's funny that they can see their breath inside the boat in the morning, I definitely do not. We typically wake up to a sub-50 degree "house" and it takes the heaters running full blast for a couple of hours to bring it up to a "toasty" 60-62 degrees. This is not fun. The condensation, the cold, the damp, everyday, it makes me wonder what the heck we are doing, aren't we supposed to be somewhere warm? Yet, once you are over the initial futility of ever being completely warm or dry, you learn you can control it a little and get it down to a manageable process. The night before we lay down newspaper under all of the hatches and windows to catch the drips.

We leave the heaters on low so we don't get ice inside (like I did the time I turned off the heater in the hull we weren't using).  First thing in the morning, start wiping down all windows. Do this repeatedly all through the day until you go to bed. The bright spot is that we have had very sunny days, and that warms up the main salon and dries out the windows for the majority of the daytime.  All of this cold has thrown homeschool a little haywire. I let the boys sleep in until the cabin is heated and the sun is up. We don't get as much done as we should these days, so it looks like we make take an early mid-year break.

On the positive side, we are in beautiful Charleston, South Carolina for the month of December and while we are here, we are trying to make the most of it.  We're downtown at the Charleston Maritime Center so we are close to the city and can walk most everywhere and when we can't there's a great bus system.
We can see Fort Sumpter and the USS Yorktown from our deck and we are right next to the aquarium. We share the dock with a beautiful wooden gaff-rigged schooner called the Spirit of South Carolina, which takes school kids on educational trips.  We also see our fair share of freighters that dock just up-river from us.  The vibrations of the tugs that push these boats, sound like a train running through the bows.

We've been treated to a Christmas parade downtown and a boat parade of lights right out our front door. There is lots to do here and we are definitely happy to be spending time in this wonderful city.