Last week I wrote a sailing story for the blog, but it felt a bit rushed to jump back in after so many months off and I didn’t hit publish. We’d recently returned home to Yahtzee in southern Mexico, cleaned her up, gotten underway, sailed a bunch of miles and made landfall in Central America, and I figure people are wondering, “What the heck has the Yahtzee crew been up to since leaving the boat in May?” So, here’s a short recap to bring you up-to-speed before getting back to our regularly scheduled program.

At the end of May, we sailed Yahtzee 450-miles from Nicaragua to Puerto Madero, Chiapas, Mexico to store her on land for hurricane season. We then jetted north to Alaska where Jill had a work contract lined up from Memorial Day to Labor Day in Seward’s community mental health center using her social work license. Boy was Alaska as amazing as ever. From Alaska, we headed east to spend time with family before flying back to Yahtzee at the end of October. After an absolutely wonderful time at my parent’s house in Michigan and Jill’s mom’s in the Finger Lakes region of New York, we loaded our bags with boat parts and books and made our way home again.

Five months after saying goodbye to Yahtzee in the boatyard (the longest we’d ever left her) we returned and found our beloved adventure mobile in pretty darn good shape. I commend the team at Marina Chiapas for a job well done. Yes, she desperately needed some affection, but we had the love to give. Our family always makes a great team, especially when the goal of getting our home in cruising shape comes, and we set to work putting Yahtzee back together.

Over the course of two weeks, a lot went into preparing Yahtzee for sea, getting her ready to carry us across the horizon to new places. The punch list seemed endless, but we completed big jobs like pulling out our leaking water heater and revamping the plumbing in the galley; bending on the sails, setting up the running rigging, repairing a couple parts on the mast and completing a full rig inspection; sanding and painting the bottom — which was skillfully done by the yard crew — and a whole lot more. Along with the boat work, I attended to the duties of my editing and writing jobs, and Jill diligently charged forward into organizing, cleaning, provisioning and homeschooling. It was a lot, yet the satisfaction was sweet when everything was done and we were motoring out to sea, making a course south for Central America.

Happily back underway again, the three night, four day passage to Nicaragua and then Costa Rica was mostly uneventful, punctuated by pods of dolphins playing in our wake, stunning star shows, and the sweet sound and feeling of Yahtzee bounding through the water under full sail. In between enjoying those moments, we looked ahead to future adventures and cracked open cruising and travel guides of Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia, all places we’ve never been before and are excited to explore.

Now, here we are. Yahtzee and crew are checked into sunny, warm and beautiful Costa Rica and all the boat work and prep, busted knuckles, dirty jobs, and trips up and down the ladder in the boatyard seem like a lifetime ago. Indeed, there’s no place we’d rather be.