Our Cozy Home Away From Home

Currently, we are spending 5 days a week working on Leela in Bellingham, WA and we resurface in Vancouver about 2 days a week to catch up on “normal” life, do laundry and answer a few emails. We chose Bellingham for a variety of reasons and every single day down there we count our blessings for our incredible friend network, the quality of the marine trades and the unbelievable marine stores all within a 5-minute drive.

But you may wonder, where in the heck do we stay when working on Leela down in the U.S. of A? Well, we can’t stay on the boat right now as it’s like a bomb went off in there. A fiberglass dust bomb to boot which makes it extra nasty. We’ve been lucky enough to have various friends host us throughout the winter but we settled a few months ago living with our extremely kind, generous and one of a kind rock star of a friend Joe Hoppis. Joe owns a lovely house 5 min drive from the boatyard (everything is 5 mins away in Bellingham it seems) and we have immersed ourselves in his life and he in ours. In order not to be too disruptive in his household which he also shares with his kids, we parked the cabin in his driveway. What’s the cabin you ask? Well, nothing short of my pride and joy. I built the cabin with my good friend Chris from Vernon, BC about 6 years ago. It’s a converted 1972 trailer painted to look like a log cabin and has a wood stove inside, deer antlers on the wall, log home living calendar, etc, etc and is just generally the cosiest place in the world. Many a ski trips were had with the cabin throughout Central British Columbia.  We don’t get to spend much time in this love nest as we are usually up and about by 7:30 am and we finally crash utterly exhausted, tired and broken around 11:30 pm. Yet every night we light the wood stove to fend off the chill and watch the flickering flames for a few minutes before falling asleep. I’m not kidding, it is THE cosiest bed known to man. Our only concern is for all her beauty and character, Leela is actually not as comfy as the cabin. No wood stove, a stiffer mattress. I’ll be sad when we have to drive her back to Vernon at the end of May prior to casting the lines with Leela.