Pack up and set sail
Wednesday, April 04, 2018
Doesn't the idea sound so romantic? So ideal? To pack up your normal day to day lives, to take long service leave and go sail the seas for 6 months. A dream come true.
And really it will be. We are so fortunate for the opportunity to spend this time together, taking the kids to places they have never seen before and just enjoying life.
But the reality is that packing up your life for 6 months is not so simple. Preparing your house and your on water house is hard work. It is time consuming and exhausting but I keep reminding myself that it will be all worth the while in just a few short weeks. And the sleepless nights will soon be forgotten and replaced by the sound of the water lapping against the hull, dolphins clicking and …
A major renovation of the cockpit was required, involving tearing up the timber floor, grinding, sanding and then priming the area before finally painting. Pete has done an amazing job and been down at the boat after work to get this finished in time for our departure date.
He has also been up the mast (thanks Neil for doing all the hard work winching) to replace halyards (ropes) and check lights.
How many hours of scrubbing and cleaning, unloading and unpacking it has taken to prepare the boat for such a voyage. 6 months whilst quite a long time is also a relatively short time for cruising and things we needed in the past for our overseas trips are not required for such a short voyage where shops & medical facilities will be within reach. So we have unloaded much and loaded as much back on- these 2 kids certainly add an extraordinary amount of things!!!! Cover your eyes and cringe at this mess… Yikes!
And that's just the boat! At the same time we have been preparing the house. I can't tell you how many trailer loads of mulch I have moved to prep the gardens for abandoning them- I will miss my gardens, not so much the weeding! And the bathroom renovation that has spilled over and taken far longer than expected has turned our evenings after the kids go to bed into another work fest…plastering, painting, tiling, grouting.
But it will be done soon and we will have earned this break from reality!!!
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