"Back on the Road Again"

Not only has it been a while since the last blog, but things have gone on a-pace over the Summer... we haven’t managed to do much boating but, and this is the reason why, we have been working hard and (in Julie’s case) changing jobs and (the means to the end), getting DamperVan finished and ready for the last big step, so......

OFF THE MARINA AND INTO THE BIG WET WORLD!!!

As I’m sure that anyone who has been, or is in mid-manoevre, of opting-out / getting afloat permanently can tell you: it takes time both physically and psychologically... in our case, about 18 months:

Step 1 - sell just about everything, move back from Germany, sell everything else (including 5 sessions at Cannock car boot where we sold everything that we certainly didn’t need, that was in reasonable to good nick, and that someone else wanted especially after I had talked them into wanting it). Try not to sell the wife...

Step 2 - actually buy the boat you put a deposit on a year earlier (yip!) and spend 2 months doing the major re-fit (see earlier blogs) whilst working / saving and selling everything else so that the boat doesn’t sink under the weight of what you think ‘will definitely come in handy later’....

Step 3 - move onto the water (kinda scary but the blow can be softened by having a mooring in a Marina); in our case, move the boat from Chirk to Stone (with no prior experience, 80 miles, 80 locks and in the first week of December 12 (luckily for them, very little other canal traffic was about - or maybe they had been warned off).

Step 4 - get used to it... iron out any of the creases in the boat / what you have done to it so far and figure out / save / pay for what you will realise is missing / what you haven’t done / what, after talking to fellow boaters and in heinsight, is still required to be done (keeping in mind what the acronym BOAT stands for - Break Out Another Thousand!)!

Step 5 - Having gained experience and feeling confident in the boat and your ability to handle it, get to the point where you are either making up excuses not to do it, or you are (like us) feeling hemmed-in and itching to get out there... either way, make the decision, do the prep, give notice to the Marina (in our case 3 months) and ‘potter off into the sunrise’....

SO, here we are at last... we can not only say, ‘we are live-aboards’ but also, ‘we are proper live-aboards on the cut’... HeeHee!!

In reality, as with any plan you have on the cut, ours hasn’t gone completely to plan... we can’t start our journey in the direction we wanted to because of maintenance works en-route so we are loitering not too far from the start-point (this is also an expectation you have to accept as a distinct possibility), ‘gotta be flexible’ ... More to follow...