On the eighth day of Christmas….

…two raccoons gave to us…a munched upon gingerbread house.

Who knew!? We have never seen raccoons on the dock, let alone inside our enclosure. We leave stuff in our enclosure all the time, and never (until now) has a creature been stirring. Somehow the delicious scent of Madi’s gummybear gingerbread house was too much to resist.

Abby woke us all at 4am with her clarion barks to warn us of visitors. Pa in his kerchief and ma in her cap peaked out the window and saw two raccoons sneaking the gingerbread house out through our enclosure rain flap.

This morning, we present the evidence. They left the cookie bits, and all but one lone gummybear are gone.

Carnage on the deck

Carnage on the dock

Lost gummybear in the cockpit

The empty cardboard foundation

Sixth Halloween aboard

As we float here in Portland dockland, we are feeling a bit of nostalgia…hope you all enjoy another Halloween!

2011: Our first Tango Halloween

2012: Sandy and journey prep

2013: Goodbye hurricane hole

2014: A very Harry Potter day

2015: Zombies in the food bank

 

Another year

It’s been quite a year for the Beck crew, as we have adapting to a larger land life with our first full year back in Portland. These including things like selling the adventure bus, buying an electric car, modifying our home situation to help out an aging family member, moving to a long-term home marina (which is much trickier in this area than the east coast!), making new Portland friends, selling our Maryland house, saying goodbye to an old doggy friend, gaining two new rescue doggy daughters, visiting London, and changing a job. Perhaps we did need a stationary year to find time to breath and center…although we are still sailing nomads at heart.

We look ahead to the joys a new year brings, hopefully with more boating adventures in the Northwest (for now). We want to wish you all a lovely New Year as well!

Happy boaty holidays

From our crew to yours!

Zombie run

The family that sails together runs together (and then works at the food bank)…happy 5K Halloween!

Happy birthday, Andy!

Another boaty year has come and gone, and even though this year is a dock year, your crew wishes you many fair winds! We appreciate and love you. Thank you for adventuring afloat with us – almost four years now!!

First year - Rhode River, MD

Booboo Hill - Exumas, Bahamas

The Two Dollar Bar in Grand Bahamas with cruising buddies

Post-marathon soak

Happy Thanksgiving!

Custom decorations by the boaty floaty girls…even in the head!

Happy Halloween from Hogwarts

Our witches in training would like to wish you all a spooky time tonight!

Hufflepuff and Griffindor

Spooky time!

Happy boaty Halloween, everyone!

We bought the burgee

Portland has a two-week Christmas Ship parade event on both the Columbia and the Willamette rivers. These two river fleets split and combine in different towns, putting on quite the show. In some towns, this event is a huge deal where everyone turns out. The kind of big deal where the local restaurants donate dishes for a feast to feed the crews, school children show up to carol, Santa and his wife visit the docks, and the town rewires shore power for the ships.

This is the 60th year for the Christmas Ships, and we are thinking of jumping into the mix! We could then add Christmas Shippers to our list of nautical know-hows. Not sure of our “theme” for lights yet…or how many nights we will sign up for. We attended our first meeting last night where we caught the excitement and bought a burgee.

Anyone have thoughts on easy (especially on the budget) themes?