How is it that events in life always seem to conspire to happen at the same moment in time. After waiting so long for the sale of the house to go through, we finally exchanged yesterday, but completion is in just ten days and suddenly everything else needs to happen that week too.

We have been keeping ourselves positive about the never ending delays on the house by telling ourselves that it would mean that instead of going into rented accommodation for a couple of months we could move straight onto the boat and in turn actually living on the boat would mean that everything would get sorted out much more quickly. However now the momentous event is upon us, there is just so much to do! Not just moving from a house we have lived in for nearly eighteen years and organising it’s contents into storage, Rick’s long scheduled First Aid Course is on Sunday and we will be moving onto a yacht at the precise moment the last bits of it’s refit are taking place.

Today I am at Ongley surrounded by ever increasing mountains of boxes and spending frustrating hours on the computer pleading with BT, British Gas or Sky to remind me of my passwords, because I can’t remember on their new system whether it should have capitals, underscores or whatever and whether the secret word was the last favourite pet or one of the six previous ones. In between times I’m hoovering out cupboards disturbing poor spiders that have been living harmlessly at the very back for years and cleaning mould from long hidden crevices in the fridges. In fact having spent quite a few days over the last couple of weeks doing much the same on the boat, I have noticed, that this sell up and sail lark does seem to involve a huge amount of cleaning!

In the mean time Rick is on board Raya ensuring, amongst all the other things that are going on, that we have a plumbing system in working order, that the heating is functioning (worryingly not yet) and today orchestrating the replacement of our old batteries. With each battery weighing over 50kg and eleven batteries on board we have drafted in Matt and some friends to do the heavy lifting, hopefully preserving Rick’s back for all the heavy boxes I am creating for him to move when he gets home in a couple of days.

There is one up side to all this frantic activity, I have had no time to ponder whether I have actually gone mad and that I should be just settling down to an old age of pottering around my beautiful garden and getting my fix of azure tropical seas at a luxury hotel in the Maldives!