LIFE AFLOAT

I am often asked if there is anything I miss now we are living afloat (let me think now; paying a mortgage, cutting the grass, noisy neighbours, mmmm…nope) the only thing I really miss is the dishwasher, I hate washing up by hand.

Master Cabin - island bed!

Galley - no dishwasher!

We are relatively new to the game of living on board our boat, although we have owned it for over seven years. We used to live in a 'real' house - well a large flat, actually - and downsizing to a 41ft long cruiser as been a challenge. There's no doubt about it, we had far too much 'stuff', but what to get rid of? The furniture was the first, and easiest shedding - what didn't go back on eBay, went to local charities or on FreeCycle. However, we had a collection of over 3,000 penguins (yes, 3,000 – I told you it was a big flat!) from a tiny ½ inch high Murano glass ornament to a 2 foot tall papier-mache ‘waiter’. John Lewis’ did us a favour last Christmas with their penguin based advert – we sold a lot of the soft toys at car boot sales while that was running.

Wheelhouse/saloon - it is never this tidy now

 Twin cabin - now larder/office/store/wardrobe

Some would say we are not proper ‘live-aboards’ because we have had to take a storage unit locally for our overspill. We blame this on the fact that we closed a business down when we moved on board, and are selling off the stock from this, but we also have some (quite a lot) of personal stuff we are not yet ready to shed (his Granada spares, my craft stuff). Perhaps eventually we will be ready to let that go too!

A year on and we are car-booting and eBaying like mad, but we still love life afloat.