Happy new year!

Abby

Silly dog, we have better pillows…

Congratulations, Madi

Madi graduated from high school! Congratulations, we are so proud of you!

Best quote ever (by Bob Bitchin) “the difference between an adventure and an ordeal is attitude”

Four2tango.COM!

When we first published this blog over seven years ago (has it been that long?) we were surprised to find that four2tango.com was being used by a company. No worries, we snagged up four2tango.net. Not as popular as the .coms but it would do in a pinch.

Well, lo and behold, on a whim, Andy decided to check to see if it was available and, indeed it was! So, now we have our very own .com site. We will keep the four2tango.net domain for at least another year or so. Apart from that, there are no other changes to the way you might access our page.

We are slowly fixing up the boat and taking care of some personal family things while we are here in Portland. However, we have started talking about our plans for the future. The current thinking is that we need to get back down south to where the weather is warmer.

Andy received a really nice camera for Christmas (Thanks Annie and Sharon!) and we will make a more concerted effort to keep everyone abreast of what is going on in our lives via the blog as well as YouTube. (Oh God, not another sailing channel!) To be honest, we have just been doing the daily grind while we are at dock in Portland. It’s really not that exciting. Once we start making more concrete plans on where Tango will travel to next, we will be sharing those details with you. Thank you to all who have visited our site and commented over the years. We really didn’t drop off the face of the earth, we’re just kind of coming out of hibernation right now. Stay tuned!

Paddleboarding

The dog days of summer?

Back aboard

Land life was great, but it wasn’t home. We loved the house and the neighborhood in St. Johns, but everyone missed Tango, so in May we moved back aboard!

Peyton really wanted us to be back onboard before her birthday in May. Our season on land was lovely, but there’s nothing quite like the boat life.

Peyton’s blackboard

Finding a home for everything feels like provisioning to go cruising!

Soon it will be goodbye to land

It’s almost that time! One more engine project between us and returning home to Tango. Our engine lines are original, and quite brittle, so time to go! Once they get in, we’re up for fun with fish tape and snaking things.

Every time we leave the boat, there is a sad family sigh…we all miss life afloat so much. A year and some change on land was nice, and this neighborhood was very wonderful, but it’s time to get back to the sailing life.

Hot dogs

The dogs miss living on the water, so we bought them a kiddie pool while we house it.

A different kind of adventure

We rented a house! Now we are true landlubbers.

There are lots of reasons we decided to move off Tango (for now), but a main one is that Tango needs some major TLC that’s tough to do while living aboard. Things like rebuilding the diesel engines (starboard is under Madi’s room). Other things include cleaning out every hold and removing the hidden piles of stuff we accumulated over the years that we don’t use anymore. One thing I’ve always loved about Fountaine Pajot design is the storage. Seems like we’ve filled up this house, and we haven’t started cleaning out the deep holds yet.

We expect this to take a few years (doing it slowly on our own), and since we aren’t leaving Portland any time soon a house seems like a good solution. Most of our family and friends felt like this was a good and logical thing to do, but it feels very revolutionary to us!

The last few weeks we’ve been walking around the house talking about how decadent things feel with unlimited running water, an oven, a flushing toilet, a bathtub, a furnace, a normal address (no more “what is a slip?”), and high speed internet. One of the girls commented that she’s glad to have a foundation in our Tango life, because she appreciates things that others might take for granted.

Someday the cruising adventures will continue, but for now we look forward to land-based ones. Here’s to adventure!

Happy Thanksgiving

The Tango crew wishes you all a very happy Thanksgiving from the Oregon coast.