I am back to my “day job”. I’ll be on board the National Geographic Sea Lion until the end of January. (Yarn orders will be mailed in my absence by my wonderfully supportive mother, who very much wishes that I would stop working on boats).

My last rotation aboard ended in the Port of LA, at the Al Larson Boat Shop. Every year the boat spends about a month in yard where we can do more extensive maintenance and also refurbish guest cabins and other projects (like installing new carpet) that take time and can’t take place with guests on board. Last year I was aboard for the entire time we were in shipyard; this year I skipped out pretty much the moment we got in. Most people have a love/hate relationship with yard. On the one hand, we can do all kinds of work without worrying about the impact it will have on guests and address problems that have been bugging us all year, on the other hand shipyards are dirty and noisy and disruptive to our daily lives. I happen to like yard. It is also incredibly strange to come back to a boat after it has been through yard. We have new stuff. All kinds of new stuff. And some things that were supposed to happen didn’t because of lack of time or money or enthusiasm for the project, and other things that were not planned for became necessary due to other unexpected events. So I have spent the last few days trying to catch up and get to know my boat again.

I met the Sea Lion in Costa Rica. We will spend the winter traveling between Herradura, Costa Rica and Colon Panama, taking a week to make our way between, stopping off at various points of interests along the way, and transiting the Panama Canal once a week. It's too hot to knit down here, but I still dream about yarn.