ice world

This is the year of ice. It's fairly unusual for us to have temperatures cold enough to create this Arctic scene we have around our boat this month.

And it's not just around the boat, but inside our bubble too.

Way back when, when Doug and I first moved aboard our first boat with our intrepid mutt Schooner-dog, we experienced a winter like this. Then we smiled upon global warming, burned some styrofoam, and hoped for the best. I guess our luck ran out.

The kids love the ice. I mean when they poke their wee noses out of the bubble and see ice on the water it's suddenly party time. Naia loves throwing rocks across the smooth, thin ice layers that first form. She laughs each time as she's expecting a PLOP and gets a SKID instead. But that's the early ice that forms when the weather is still tolerable.

Then the thicker ice of deep winter sets in. We can hear it bumping against our hulls like clumsy polar bears. Zach and the other boat kids love pressing their luck on the edge of the sinking dinghy dock so they can throw snowballs...

...and of course poke ice chunks with sticks. Of course.

Sometimes I chuckle thinking about Zach age 40 saying to his kids, "When I was YOUR age, I didn't have these newfangled toys you kids have, I played with icebergs, sticks, and rocks!"