I just kept telling myself, “This is the coldest it will ever be on this boat.  It will only get better from here…”

The last sunset of 2012

Since we had recently purchased Shannon, and we had two weeks off for Christmas vacation/holiday, we decided it would be a great time to spend some time aboard Shannon.

Well, what we didn’t really factor in was that Shannon doesn’t have any real heating system on it yet and the temperatures in Everett are in the 20’s and 30’s this time of year.

Fortunately the two 1500 watt space heaters that were running constantly were finally able to bring the temperature inside the boat up to a comfortable level after the first two days.

If you look close enough you can see the ice on the water

Once things warmed up inside, we had a nice stay.  There was a long list of things that needed attention, so this was a “working vacation”.

We took the time to peak into every little nook and cranny, finding hidden treasures at almost every turn.

Some of those “treasures” turned out to be more like “expensive surprises” but that is one of the joys of owning a boat.

We did confirm one of our suspicions… we as a family can live and work well in a small space.  Since it was so cold, we didn’t get to spend a lot of time outside the boat.  This didn’t dampen our spirits.  The kids enjoyed playing and exploring in the boat and Kelly and I didn’t have any problem finding good places to sit down and enjoy some reading time.

Despite the cold weather, this was a great first stay aboard our new (to us) boat.  We learned some things, fixed some things and found a few more things that still need to be learned and fixed.  But that is another story…