Haven? or Hades?

T minus 8.  A week tomorrow and we will be liveaboards! Our 12 month adventure will have properly begun.  It feels strange to think that next Sunday night will be the last we sleep in our lovely house for a while.

The bed, I have to say, is a biggie.  In the house we have a very comfortable queen bed with a king size doona (quilt/duvet for those who don’t speak Strine).  This is because I married is a doona-stealer, who wraps himself up like a sausage roll given half a chance, while I am left shivering and uncovered.  So we got a king-size doona which solves the problem.  Our bed is one of those super-comfortable ones, and whenever we’ve been staying elsewhere or camping , and come home, Matt and I always sink into  our bed with sighs of relief and agree that we have the best bed in the world.

So we’re going from this:

To this:

Now to be fair, the aft cabin doesn’t usually look like this.  The bunk was originally a bit smaller than a double, and being a boat bunk, was a funny shape (including narrower at the feet end)  We ummed and ahhed about whether we should go to the trouble and expense of widening the bunk – there was plenty of floor space to widen it in to, it’s a good-sized cabin.  We had half-convinced ourselves to live with it for a few months, and see how we felt after living on board.  However, the mattress is also old and tired, and rather than replace it twice, we decided to bite the bullet and extend the bunk.  So Matt and his dad, (who is pretty handy and helped build our house), decided to get stuck in one morning on the boat.

What they didn’t count on was the bunk fighting back.  It didn’t want to come apart.  I may have mentioned before, this is one strongly-built boat.  The original builder fitted out much of the interior with wood, which in most places seems to be glued together, then the joint is reinforced with screws, then the screws are expoxied in place.  And then the whole joint is covered in epoxy, just to be sure!

While this fills me with comfort that our boat’s interior is super-strong and robust, it does mean that it’s a total pain to make any changes.

We have just over a week to go.  The house is half–packed up and every day I have a different area to clear out: store/garage sale/rubbish.  But we’re getting there.  Matt is still working 12-hour days.  He comes home in the evening to have me thrust crates of stuff under his nose: “Shall we sell this? What about this?” and gradually the rooms and cupboards are becoming wonderfully empty.  It feels like we’ll get there, in one weeks’ time the house will be packed up and pristine and ready to welcome a new family.

I’m just not so sure the boat will be ready to welcome us!  There’s plenty of room on the aft deck, maybe we’ll have a few nights of sleeping under the stars…