It’s the second-to-last day of February and I find myself sitting behind the computer thinking, “Wow, what an awesome month it has been.”

Winter in rural Alaska continues to inspire and captivate at every turn, and living here through the offseason has been far more rewarding than we could have imagined. But even though we’ve enjoyed all sorts of outdoor wonders this month, our crews’ current enthusiasm is rooted on Yahtzee. I guess that’s what finishing some big projects and hanging with sailing friends will do to the winter psyche. Also, it doesn’t hurt that the amount of daylight here is growing in leaps and bounds.

After triumphantly finishing the headliner earlier in the month, we made our way north to meet friends for some skiing and snowboarding in Girdwood. Ryan and Autumn from SV Velella came up from Seattle for the long weekend and it was truly one of those friend moments you instantly want to repeat again and again.

Skiing and snowboarding at Alyeska was incredible, and showing them around Seward was a ton of fun. But it was mostly refreshing to be around great cruising friends again — it probably didn’t matter where we were. To talk about boats and destinations, dreams and projects, and even to share a few sea stories over laughter, long campfires and hot toddys was perfect. It was hard to say goodbye.

With them headed home, we were back to our normal routines of playing and trying to make headway on boat projects. Like clockwork, our new heater arrived in the mail from Fisheries and that job vaulted to the top of the list. Fortunately, because our old heater was similar, is was mostly a plug-and-play job with just a few small kinks to get worked out.

While I was getting that sorted, our friends from Anchorage came down to spend the weekend and work on their Beneteau 42 Blown Away. They have kids of a similar age so we decided to stay at the marina for the night to have dinner and hang with them. Good times.

They’re relatively new cruisers, which made the fun of the night pulling out charts of the area to talk about routing and anchorages. A two week cruise to Prince William Sound is on their summer schedule, so we got to reminisce about our time there last year.

More than anything, though, it was energizing to be back in the marina aboard boats with friends again. There’s something about the connection that rejuvenates the sailing soul and makes us even more excited to press forward.