Winter Preparations Shrink Wrapping and The Cookbook

So, as winter nears, we are going through the same old preparations as we have done in the past 8 years,  again. Some friends have left, and we have some new friends and neighbors, but mostly we seem to behanging out with the same group.

Every Friday evening, the marina opens up the pool, heated up to about 100 degrees, and we have the pool party. That is our social hour where a group of us get together under the steamy  tent that covers the pool and enjoy the "Biggest Hot Tub in Boston"

Danielle trying to decypher the hand-written version of Lisa's cookbook

Our friend Lisa "Just Married" is writing a cook book. She asked, and we volunteered to be the "Test" cooks. She gies us the instructions, and we prep and cook the food. She observes us and takes notes in order to improve her receipes. Last week it was Danielle's turn, so Brian, her husband and I just sat and enjoyed the wine, watching the Lisa watching Danielle cook !

Lisa is carefully watching and taking notes while Danielle is cooking

Carefully inspecting the sauce or juices to make sure that everything is perfect

Some people go really full out high class in ensuring their comfort in the boat. Chris on Secco loves to have the best quality of everything. So he decided to purchase and install a 48,000 BTU/hour Hydronic Hurricane Heater for his 45Ft 2013 Jenneau. He has been working on it during his off time for the last 5 weeks. I must say I admire the guy. Professional installation takes two guys one full week of laber, costing $8000.- Add to that the cost of over $10,000 for the unit and the accessories, you have a expensive, but very comfortable unit. You save big on electricity, but end up using 5-10 gallons of diesel a week. However the main purpose is that you end up with a evenly heated dry boat.

Here is the distribution center of the Hurricane hydronic heater.
It combines the engine and hear water with the in-board hot water heater

We have a shrinkwrap group. It started as 6 boats 5 years ago and now grew to 17 boats. We but the shrinkwrap wholesale and help each other out in "shrinking".  Waterdancer already has it's shrinkwrap on, but the shrinking is not complete, because it has been blowing here for days.

Waterdancer with it's unshrunk wrap on

Last Weekend was nice, so we started early Saturday morning in a nice sunny day and finished in pouring rain Sunday night. So far we have about a dozen boats covered, and half of them are completed. I am hoping to finish Waterdancer this weekend. I ended up borrowing a different type of heat gun from Mark, and so far managed to burn 3 holes into my wrap ... oh well !

The Crew working very hard on covering one of the boats.  Thank you Roxy for the bagel and coffee 

Here is Imagine with a very creative door !

We were soaked on Sunday. So Jose of Ipanema was kind enough to invite us to his boat (which was the one we got soked in) and had a great Pork Chop dinner.

Enjoying delicious pork chops on Ipanema

 Danielle had cooked some pork too, so we had a wonderful evening where we pretty much depleted most of his Caribbean rum collection and red wine stash!

Symbolic depiction of Jose's red Wine Collection

6th Annual Here Comes WInter Party

Today was our 6th annual "Here Comes Winter Party" at Constitution Marina. We have this tradition that every year, the week after we move over, we throw a party for the winter liveaboards. The idea is for folks to meat each other, talk about winter living, and exchange tips, and simply have a fun time.
Danielle usually provides the case of champagne, and a spiral ham, and people contribute.

I can see Cat, Mark, Nadine, John, Mark, Brian Buzz, Lisa, Roxy, Kirsten, Brian and many others

Walter, Lisa, Richard Nadine,Martin, Mark and others
 

Although it was raining in the morning, the clouds dissipated in the afternoon, and we had a very large crowd showing up. Initially we gathered inside Waterdancer, but eventually the party spilled out to the docks. Everybody contributed with great food and various bottles of champagne, as well as some very creative Bloody Mary drinks.

In the mids of things, Buzz and Martin went to help Paul and Elizabeth move the stuff out of their van. They are our very dear friends who are moving to land. They will be dearly missed by the Boston Liveaboard community, but it was a step that they needed to do, and they are very happy about it. Based on reports we received from Buzz and Martin, we are very happy about it too, because now we have a great space to party  on land, especially when a storm hits. !

As the sun started to go down, we moved the tables over in front of Pipe Dream, our neighbors. We were hoping that the crowd would get them out to join the party, but they were nowhere to be seen. In any case thank you for letting us use your dock space.

I also was hoping that we would have some of the new liveaboards joining us, but that did not happen. But the usual suspects were there and the party went on for 10 hours.
We had literally over 30 guests show up. Thank you everybody for a great start for a great winter

Halloween 2013

The liveaboard lifestyle is a community. Like we do every year, we decided to have a boaters Trick-Or-Treat event going on Halloween night. We announced that all boats who would like to have the kids knocking on their hulls, should have their navigation or anchor lights on.

The full set of pictures can be seen in the Halloween section of our album.

As darkness fell, the kids living in the Marina started to visit the boats. A good handful of boats that participated. This event is special, because it reinforces the feeling by the kids that our boats are our homes.
They live in their own home (boat) and go visit other boats which are their nighbors, for trick and treat.
We have about 8 or 10 kids that are living aboard.  They pretty much all came by at one time or another. We still have bags of treats left, that we will probably bring out in this weekends Sunday Brunch Party.

Danielle my darling of course did all the work, got the candies, arranged the music, and prepared the boat while I just sat around and took pictures.