Fast Forward

I have been awake since before 6am this morning packing our house in my head! I think I had been lulled into a false sense of security of time recently concentrating all my efforts on getting Kevin and the boat ready for delivery. My departure in August still seemed a way off and partly by self-preservation I had been putting my leaving work and moving house to the back of my mind. As regular readers of our blog will know we had put our house up for sale last August and received only one viewing in the few months we had it on the market. I had therefore been sitting back comfortably thinking that all that work was still ahead of me… until the day before yesterday!

So, as Kevin reminds me my job is now much easier, only the wedding to organise no house clearance to arrange as our buyer wants to buy the contents too. As catamarans are not designed for very heavy cruising loads we have been very economical on what we are taking with us – we are hiring an escort sized van to take everything over to the boat and this includes electronics and autopilot plus generator and liferaft! Therefore, the majority of our household belongings will be staying here. However, as we have been preparing for this for some months we are largely now decluttered as anything which is not in use has been eBayed! I am still finding it rather eerie walking round the house and imagining that I will almost literally be walking out and handing over the keys in only 4-5weeks time (touch wood, fingers crossed)!

Only a couple of weeks ago I was talking to my sister about putting our house on the market and she asked what I would do when the house sold, to which I promptly replied I would be moving in with her! I am not sure either of us expected that to be happening from early May and in fact I will be dividing my time between my parents and younger sister, when not working away. Although, as I pointed out, my parents also have their house on the market as they are planning to move to Lanzarote fulltime, but as their villa is fully rented for the next few months, Donna’s spare room could get very crowed! It will actually be a good opportunity to spend time with my family before we set off, as I haven’t seen as much of them as I would have liked due to our preparations for the trip and working in recent months.

I have really been having a reality attack in the last couple of days, Kevin had his as he finished work and is now firmly in the excited zone. My reality attack generally manifests itself in to-do lists anyway, so it is quite productive! What this really means though is that I can finally see myself out there and doing this too now. In fact, as we are now selling the house early we have decided I will finish work slightly earlier too so that I can take Alex out for her school holidays in mid July to the Canaries and stay out there to have 3 weeks with the three of us together on the boat before the wedding. Alex quickly calculated that this means she can do more scuba diving (which she loves) with three of us on the boat and I (perhaps vainly, though surely permitted for a wedding?!) calculated that I won’t now be the only one at the wedding looking milky white! Honestly though, this will really be the best start to our trip, there has been far too many occasions in the last few years when I haven’t been around due to work and it will be wonderful to start our adventure properly with Alex on board.

So fingers crossed it all works out. Rough timetable for those who have been asking:
• Sat 5th April – Leaving drinks for Kevin – The Ship, Elswick from 7pm
• Tue 8th April – Collect & pack van, drive to Portsmouth to catch overnight ferry
• Wed 9th April – Arrive St. Malo 9am, drive to La Rochelle, Yacht brokers final pre-handover checks
• Thu 10th April – Sea trial and boat handover, frantic van unpacking
• Fri 11th April – Jo drives van back to Preston via St. Malo ferry
• Sat 12th April – Jo & Alex fly out to La Rochelle
• Sun 13th April – Jo returns home and leaves Alex for half term week
• Sat 19th April – Jo, Christine (family friend) & Paul (from Kevin’s course) arrive
• Sun 20th April – Alex, Christine and Jo fly home

We have two more weeks planned in La Rochelle to ensure the boat is ready before heading off to the Canaries late April.