Becoming Liveaboards: The Final Countdown

We’re moving aboard in 3 days.  The house is becoming emptier and more spacious and echoey, while the boat is bursting at the seams.  There are crates of stuff piled in every cabin as there hasn’t been time to stow our belongings, and you have to climb over things to move around. 

The Garage Sale Pile

This week has been dreary, just flat out busy packing boxes and lugging them to a) the shed to store, b) the carport for the garage sale on Sunday, or c) the car to transfer to the boat.  I hadn’t realized how draining it is, making decisions all day about what to do with bits of your life.  And even harder when doing the kids toys and clothes, and helping them decide.  The girls have two canvas shopping bags each and a small A4-sized crate for all the belonging (bar clothes and books) that they want to bring on board. 

Tilly was easy, didn’t want much, happy to put lots in the “pass it on with love” pile, and a few things in the tea-chest marked “STORAGE”.  Her “TAKE ABOARD” bags were half full. Sasha, on the other hand, was wild-eyed through the whole process.  Her “STORAGE” tea-chest was brimming with goodies and her “TAKE ABOARD” bags were bulging at the seams, with a pile growing alongside.  “But Mummy, I love them ALL” she said tearfully, when asked to choose what to let go, and I my heart broke for her, even as I wrestled with frustration. Hashtag thedichotomyofparenting.

The STORAGE piles

And sorting stuff with kids takes the longest time, as they’re constantly distracted.  Leave one to help the other, and when you come back to the first, they’ll be immersed in a complicated game with latest small plastic figures to be unearthed, eyes at floor level and doing the voices.  Which is so cute and you can’t help but admire the huge power of those imaginations, even as you weep internally at the mountains still to be scaled.

Come the evenings, I’m an emotionally wrung-out dishrag.  Matt comes home from work, having left thirteen hours previously, and starts packing.  So I can’t really sit on the sofa and veg out (or weep, rocking, in a corner) but pitch in.  For solidarity’s sake.

The end is in sight.  The light is definitely there, at the end of the tunnel, beckoning to us.  As Matt puts it, this is the storm before the calm. There will be pristine anchorages.  There will be kayak-paddling.  There will be the showing of kids how to use a halyard as a swing.  There will be sundowners.  There will be starlit family cuddles on the aft deck, watching for the space station.

Just a few more days, a few more boxes, one garage sale, a few Vinnies runs,  and we’ll be living on board.  That’s when it’ll feel like our adventure has really begun.  And we can’t wait. 

Passing the time ....

...while mum packs ...