We have moved aboard

A few weeks ago, I wrote "Acting now to avoid chaos for moving onboard day" in Preparing to move aboard. Has it worked out that way?

Not so much!

We have had a very hectic few weeks. Jane finished work on July 4th but I didn't finish until Sunday 20th. My final week was really busy with a handover to a new member of staff and big events the whole of the last weekend.

Since then, the rush to be ready to move out of the house has been relentless. I think we are close to 15 trips to the local recycling centre with a very full Nissan Leaf. Plus a trip to Nottingham in an extra long wheelbase van to deliver furniture, the eCargobike and the timber rescued from our dyneema rigging stretch framework (to build a store for the eBike). That was on Saturday and we needed to be out of the manse on Monday (yesterday) so that builders could start today on all the work to prepare it for the next Minister.

Yesterday we did 5 trips with rubbish and recycling. Plus, clearing every room and packing a smaller van (a bashed-up 5-year-old Ford Transit). During the day it became obvious that we were very far behind schedule and also that van wasn't large enough.

In the end we worked through the night and eventually left at 7am today (Tuesday) to drive the Transit and our Leaf to Beaumaris (leaving behind half a garage of stuff, some for the recycling centre and some we couldn't fit in the vehicles).

The boat isn't chaotic because we have been too tired to unload much (we haven't even found the "proper" sheet and duvet cover for our bed). But we feel a mixture of very chaotic (due to the pressure of deadlines to move out and lack of time to get ready) and at peace.

The new chapter of our lives has arrived, so we have celebrated with a bottle of nice Rioja and caught up with the finish to the Tour de France. Now we are off to bed with 2 or 3 more days of chasing to and fro with the hire van to get everything out of the house, lots of eBay sales posted and get somewhat unpacked.

Here is to our new life!