Friday night was our first night on Grace as our new home. We finally moved out of the cottage in Cromford around 4.30pm that day. The cottage looked fab…. all nicely painted and sparkled for the new tenant who moved in on Saturday. I’d be happy to live there, it’s a great spot.

Our friends Sally and B served us a top quality brunch that Friday to help us with the final few trips up and down the path. For those of you who’ve never been to the cottage it sits about 100m up a swithcback path from the road. Everything is carried up and down this path. At least moving out it was all down hill.

Then over to Hull to unload the van and get stuff onto the boat and find hiding places for everything. Today is Monday and about 50% is stowed.

We caught up with Dave’s mum and dad on Friday night, and his brothers and their families yesterday. The Savages helped us putting some reefs in the main sail and Richard, Dave’s brother was most pleased to be asked to ‘hoist the mainsail’. Thanks for the help guys!

We’re sat in a coffee shop doing some work getting used to what life may be like in the future. How do I feel….. excited, proud we’ve actually got to this point, exhausted (although a couple of good nights sleep have helped) in getting to this point and a little nervous at to the unknown, but it’s a good nervousness.

Weather permitting we’ll be setting sail on Friday. South coast will be the first proposed destination. Please put vibes out for fair winds and sunshine. Thanks!

This is my view from my chair as I have my first cuppa of the day. Our current front room furniture is a 2 garden chairs and an upturned box. We have a futon mattress on the floor in the bedroom and our final personal possessions scattered around the place waiting to go into boxes to one of three storage places.

We moved ‘the office’ to South Wales on Thursday and Friday. Our tenant moves in this coming Saturday so we will be boat based from Friday night. This weeks ‘to do list’ includes finally clearing the house, doing odd bits of painting and remedial work so it is ready for Saturday, seeing  friends in Cromford, a couple of trips over to the boat in Hull to get stuff stowed, a bit of actual business work and sell the car, once we no longer need it.

Thing is, in a couple of weeks time, this practical stuff will all be ancient history and we’ll have time to get our heads around boat life and travelling. Which is what it’s all about.

We don’t have a definite date when we plan to depart Hull; the weather and how tired we are will influence that. But as Dave says…. “We’ll go when we’re almost ready”.

My Mum is sadly no longer with us but if she was, I know she’d be astounded and amused as I’ve taken up sewing. As well as finding time to bring up 4 kids, play tennis, star in the local ‘am dram’ productions, pick pounds and pounds of strawberries (we had a very large garden), she was for a time an accomplished teacher of what was then called domestic science. Which included teaching sewing.

I never had a whole heap of interest in such things and probably / certainly spent time dissing it as a skill. There was dog walking, throwing stones in the river or balls of various shapes and sizes to be hit to occupy my time.

Many years later, subliminally I must have absorbed some level of skill as I’ve almost completed making new dinghy and outboard covers. Not perfect, the stitching is a bit wobbly, but hey, my friend Ken called round last night and was impressed and that is good enough for me. So thanks Mum. Just a few years late!

Dave has been testing his woodworking and varnishing skills. Oh and metal working skills as he’s made a stainless steel bracket for the AIS antenna.

In writing this its occurred to me that our nephews and nieces are probably absolutely delighted we’re leaving the country as God knows what kind of ‘crafty item’ they may have received as a gift for Chritsmas this year.

We’re on countdown. Hope to be departing in mid June.

New dinghy cover under construction

Top step of the companionway getting a spruce up